Friendship is Forever: Redux
by Fabrosi
Summary: A re-imagining of "Friendship is Forever", unrelated to the original story's events. This can be read without reading the original, and in my opinion will probably be better.
1. Chapter 1: The Garden

Friendship is Forever: Redux

Chapter 1: The Garden

Twilight glanced about as she cantered down the vast hallway, past sweeping panoramas of stained glass and under chandeliers whose crystals tinkled gently as air currents brushed past. The day was young and beautiful, the sunlight a warm embrace that clung gently to her side at each window she passed.

No one had told she was allowed to be here, but then again, no one had told her she wasn't. The echo of her hoofsteps sounded furtive and hesitant; the castle walls seemed to bear down on her with their disdainful gaze.

She passed a huge archway into the gardens. Immediately, she was assailed by a panorama of colors, smells and shapes that demanded her attention. Birdsong and the swarming hum of dense life reverberated through her. She found her senses overwhelmed by constant signals: the intense, sweet smell of blooming flowers; the chatter of chipmunks; some unidentifiable tang in the air; and the rustling sound of gently swaying braches—all of which loosely translated to _I am alive_. She sneezed.

She slipped through the earthy underbelly of a hedge and found herself the shade of a stout, curvy tree. It was planted neatly in the center of a large, dirt circle, half-surrounded by a curved section of the hedge. Some instinct, some warm sensation spreading upwards and outwards from her hooves told her she wouldn't be found here.

She lay down on the soft, fine soil, watching periodic hints of sunlight filter down through the leaves above like knowing winks. From the branches dangled bright red fruits she had never seen before, all bobbing in the wind so hypnotically that she was surprised when she found herself standing upright, craning her neck upwards.

_I shouldn't eat those,_ said a nagging voice in the back of her mind as she hopped up, placing her hooves against the tree's wide truck. _I don't have permission,_ she thought as she leaned hard against the tree, straining her forelegs in an effort to shake the fruit down. _It probably belongs to someone,_ she realized as she narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and drew deep from the well of magic inside of her. _I'll get in trouble,_ she reminded herself as a fruit separated from a branch with a satisfying _snap_, drifting gently downwards into her open mouth. _I should have asked first, _she lamented as she took the biggest bite she could manage, savoring the impossibly sweet juices as they burst through the fruit's broken skin. It was the best thing she had ever tasted.

The world disappeared as she closed her eyes and took another bite, then another. Before she could fully process what was happening, the fruit became a ravaged, forlorn core resting in the dirt at her hooves.

She shivered. A high wind whistled somewhere far away, and a cold sound rang through the air—a high ringing distinctly not of the garden, but of some distant, austere consciousness chiding her for what she'd just done. She slunk away from the tree, stepping carefully around a bed of blue roses and onto the grassy path. A cloud passed overhead and she shivered as the sun's warmth suddenly faded.

A strange anxiety took her as she left the flowers and trees behind, taking a hedge-walled path around the corner. Up ahead, there was a weathered marble fountain with an octagonal base, surrounded by patches of meticulously manicured shrubbery.

Twilight's ears perked up as she spotted something white sitting in the grass, up against the fountain. She trotted closer, gradually resolving the nebulous shape into a rabbit. She slowed down, hoping not to startle it. It held oddly still, and she quickly realized something was wrong.

She came to a stop looking down on the rabbit, which was lying on its side with its eyes open and its legs held stiff. She stomped on the ground, thinking to wake it up, but it remained motionless. The wind reached a chilling, mournful pitch. She felt her heart beat faster but didn't understand why.

She nudged the rabbit gently with her magic, but only managed to make it flop over. She leaned down to examine it closer, but its soft white fur yielded no answers.

"Twilight! There you are!" She jumped, scrambling away from the rabbit and bumping into the fountain. As she spun around, she saw an alicorn with a brilliant white coat approach from one of the hedge paths.

"Princess!" she gasped. "I didn't mean to…" She trailed off, her heart and mind racing. How much did Celestia know? Had she seen her eat the fruit? What was going to happen now?

"I'm sorry," said Celestia, "I didn't mean to startle you. It just occurred to me that while you're living in Canterlot, you might need some help finding your way around the castle…"

Celestia grew quiet as her eyes fell on the rabbit. Twilight thought she heard a soft sigh.

"There's something wrong with the rabbit," she said. "It won't move."

Celestia bit her lip. Twilight's stomach sank as she wondered whether she'd be blamed for the rabbit's state.

"It looks like it's passed on."

"On to where?" She wondered why the princess sounded so sad.

"I mean it's dead."

Twilight cocked her head to the side. "What does that mean?"

Celestia looked down at her for a long time. Twilight looked at the ground, shuffling uncomfortably. "It's done living," the princess finally said. "It can't move anymore."

Twilight frowned. "It must be really scared. I was stomping the ground to wake it up and all it could do was listen to me. It couldn't run away."

Celestia shook her head. "It can't hear anything, either. It can't see anything, feel anything, or do anything at all."

Twilight blinked. None of this made any sense. She tried to picture everything going dark and quiet, but it was more than that. She imagined falling asleep, but it was more than that too. How could anyone experience _nothing?_

"How long will he stay like that?" she asked.

Once again, Celestia took a long time to answer. "Forever. There's nothing anypony can do."

Twilight peered into the creature's glassy, dark eye. _Is this my fault? _"Why would something like that happen?"

"Maybe it just got too old."

"What do you mean, princess?"

"When things get too old, they die. It's a different length of time for each living thing, but everything dies eventually."

Twilight's coast bristled as a sinking suspicion crept through her veins like some insidious poison. "What about ponies?"

"Even ponies."

The wind slowed to silence, and the cold ringing sound echoed through the garden once more, prompting Celestia to scan the skies for its source. Twilight felt something rise up inside her, something ancient, terrible and instinctive passed on by all who had lived before her. This was a new emotion, distinct from ordinary sadness or fear. She felt deeply sick inside, instilled with a weight that would surely bear down on her until her own death.

Up above, the clouds passed and the sun shone down once again, but Twilight could barely feel its warmth.

"It's not something you should worry about right now," Celestia assured her. "You're young, and you still have many, many years to live."

"But I'll die eventually?"

"It won't be for a long time. Longer than you can imagine."

Was living longer than she could imagine the same as living forever? Twilight wasn't sure.

"What about you?"

Celestia looked away, up towards the sky. "Well… I won't die. At least, I don't think I will. For thousands of years I haven't gotten any older than I am now."

Why would Celestia live forever while she had to die? As Twilight took a deep, shuddering breath, she noticed that the garden no longer smelled like anything.

"Come along," said Celestia, turning away from the rabbit. "There are plenty of other new things for you to see today, and no reason you should dwell on this."

Twilight glanced over her shoulder as the Princess led her back into the stone hallways. The rabbit seemed to stare at her forlornly, imploring her to stay and make it better. Was it just going to lie there forever, or would someone move it? When she died, would everyone just walk away from her body and forget about her? What could she do to become like Celestia and live forever?

The air inside the castle felt cold and stale. As Celestia expounded upon the fantastic branches of magic she'd be learning about in Canterlot, Twilight tried to ignore the persistent knot in her stomach.


	2. Chapter 2: The Visitor

Chapter 2: The Visitor

She flapped her wings furiously, scraping the grass below with her flailing legs. As she crested the top of the vast ridge, there was a brief and exhilarating moment in which the ground disappeared and she felt and heard nothing but her heart and wings beating in synchronization. Despite her best efforts, she dove downwards, nose first, swarming stars flooding her vision as she tumbled roughly down a steep, dusty slope whose presence she hadn't anticipated. As she struggled to slow down, she was vaguely aware of scrapes and bruises accumulating from the confused flurry of falling and rolling. Finally, she braced her hoof against a solid patch of ground and began skidding to halt, flopping onto her side just as she reached level ground.

She felt hot, angry welts throb on her sides, back, and legs, but as she jerked around on the ground, examining herself, she didn't notice much blood.

"Are you alright?" called a voice from above. She craned her neck and looked up at the rough, jagged slope she'd just unceremoniously negotiated: from this distance, it seemed a stark, barren scar on the land, replete with rocks and dry root systems poking out at haphazard angles. Up at the top of the ridge stood a sapphire pony with disheveled cobalt hair.

"I'm fine, Luna."

The younger alicorn shuffled sideways down the slope, halting every few seconds to catch her balance. A cloud of dust stirred up around her, forcing her to squint. "Why did you try to do a thing like that?"

Celestia pushed herself up onto her hooves, shaking off copious amounts of dust. "I thought there would be someplace to land." She looked around. The slope had been part of a massive crater, barren save for scattered, dry shrubs.

"A shooting star!" said Luna. Celestia turned to her. "It's one of those stars that flies through the sky. It must have landed here and made this hole."

"Then where's the star?"

Luna shrugged. Celestia looked towards the center of the crater and spotted something small and black poking out of the ground. She started to flap her wings, but thought better of it and walked over to the mysterious object, followed by Luna.

It was a thin, rectangular rod, its surface smooth and shiny, as though unable to abide even a single speck of the surrounding dust. It protruded less than a yard from the ground, but might have extended any distance underground. Celestia might have imagined it, but as she leaned down to examine it, it seemed to emit a chilling, sterile hum, like music made not only by something metallic, but _for_ something metallic.

"We should leave," said Luna. "Whatever that thing is, it isn't good."

"How can you tell?"

"It makes me feel sick."

Celestia couldn't say she disagreed, but she was intent on understanding this strange new visitor in her world. She sniffed it, but it smelled like nothing. She tapped it with her hoof, and the hum became louder and angrier, a shrill ring of something that did not want to be touched. Both ponies stepped back. They watched silently, breathlessly as the thing vibrated softer, becoming quiet once more.

"I'm going to try to see what's under it." Celestia tentatively reached out with her magic, brushing the thing gently. When there was no response, she grasped it and began pulling it upwards, all while taking measured steps backwards. The thing responded with a violent jerk, tugging downwards with terrifying strength. Celestia braced her hooves hard against the ground and tried with all her might to slide the thing up, but her efforts exhausted her and her forelegs collapsed as the black rod slid into the ground, leaving such a smooth covering of dirt that there was no sign it had existed.

The two ponies stared at the same spot on the ground for a long time. Finally, Luna turned around and began climbing out of the crater.

"How do you think it got there?" asked Celestia, trotting up alongside her sister.

Luna shook her head. "I don't know, but I'm glad it's gone now."

"We should ask Mother about it. Maybe she'll know."

They passed through the vast, grassy hills they'd come from, into the dense, cool mists that gathered near the edge of the forest. Most of the year, brilliant sunlight filtered through the canopy, spreading scattered, bright freckles across the ferns. Now, however, the fog obscured everything but their immediate surroundings.

Luna let out a strange hissing sound. Confused, Celestia turned to see her exhaling slowly but loudly, her wide, crossed eyes intently focused on her frosting breath. "Why does it do that?" she asked.

"Because there's fog."

"Why is there fog?"

"Because it's cold."

"Why is it cold?"

"I don't know. It just is."

As it grew steadily darker, Celestia worried that they were getting off-course. The familiar landmarks were growing fewer and far between, and each new gulch, clearing and stream seemed like one she'd never seen before.

"Wait," said Luna. She stood almost completely still, twitching her ears and darting her eyes about.

"What…"

"Shh."

Celestia followed her lead, looking and listening. She shivered as she detected a faint ringing sound—the very same that the black rod had emitted. This time, however, it sounded father away, but louder, as though it were echoing from a great monolith on a hill somewhere.

She whipped her head around at the sound of a loud _crunch_ coming from the brush. Luna ducked behind her with a sharp intake of breath. Out in the fog, there appeared the faintest outline of something the size and shape of an adult pony, looking straight at them.

Luna sprung back into the pony's view and started walking forward. "Mother!" she called, moving her head about as she tried to pierce into the fog. Celestia held back, sensing that something was amiss. The pony began to step backwards, disappearing from view completely and prompting Luna to enter a full gallop until she, too, disappeared into the fog. Celestia prepared to chase after her echoing hoofsteps, but Luna quickly returned, looking confused and afraid.

"What happened?"

Luna shook her head. "It wasn't Mother."

"Then who was it?"

"I don't know. Just a black pony with blue eyes. Whoever it was, he ran away when I got close."

"How do you know it was a he?"

"His face was shaped different from Mother's. He was a boy pony, just like there are boy animals."

They looked at each other for several seconds, silently sharing their helpless apprehension.

"Maybe it was someone nice," Celestia offered without believing herself. Luna shrugged and set off down the path at a faster clip than before.

Celestia cantered up alongside her. "Whoever it was probably ran away because he didn't know if _we_ were nice. Imagine thinking you were the only pony and seeing two little ones."

"I guess that makes sense."

"Maybe if we see him again, we can introduce ourselves. Then we can all go back to the castle, and Mother can stay with him so she won't be alone when we go out."

"That would be nice." They stepped carefully across the slippery, round rocks of a recently-dried riverbed. The trees here were short and thin, so there was a little more light to see by.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

Luna glanced at Celestia. "That pony gave me a bad feeling. I felt sick, like when we were standing next to that black thing in ground."

"You don't know what that feeling means. Maybe you just don't like black things."

Luna said nothing. After another few minutes, they spotted a wide, yellow landscape through the trees and began galloping towards it, flattening ferns and snapping branches as they dashed out towards the pinkish, fading light on the horizon. Finally, the burst out through the tree-line, immediately disoriented as they strode away from the fog and into a sea of marigolds.

"We're close to home," urged Celestia, running towards the edge of the flowers, where she stepped onto a familiar dirt path. Together, the two sisters galloped down it, around a large, familiar butte and towards the sturdy stone castle rapidly coming into view. The parapets stood proudly as ever, the flags fluttered softly in the wind, and what remained of the sunlight struck the roof at a dazzling angle. It was all a testament to the only living things who knew how to transform stone, wood and metal into works of wonder, to dredge memories and meaning up from the earth.

Celestia slowed down to catch her breath as she crossed the drawbridge across the moat, while Luna bounded on ahead, through the archway.

As Celestia caught up, her entire being immediately flooded with the kind of buzzing warmth and comfort that could only be found in the place she called home.

"Mother!" Luna's voice echoed down the spacious hallway, bouncing off the mighty granite pillars. "We're home! Where are you?"

Celestia made for the door on the far-left side. "She's probably out looking for us. Unless you want to get lost, just stay here until she gets back."

Luna pouted. "What if she doesn't want to come back until she finds us?"

"She knows we can get back by ourselves. Even if it had gotten dark, we would still have been fine. I know how to make light, remember?" Celestia tilted her head down and lit her horn for a few seconds.

Luna didn't seem placated, but she followed Celestia down the side hallway to their room. Against the left wall was a wide shelf stacked with statuettes: a golden rabbit, a brass snake, a silver apple, a ruby fish, and countless others that Celestia couldn't yet name.

As Celestia lay on her bed with her head up, Luna went immediately to the silver-paned window above her own bed, planting her hooves on the sill and watching the last few minutes of the sunset.

"We should build a castle someday, Tia," she murmured in a far-off voice.

"I don't see why not."

"And we should connect it to this one through an underground tunnel."

"If you want to build something really big, it'll take a long time."

"We'll just build a little every day for a hundred years."

Celestia found that an odd idea to wrap her head around—she wasn't even a hundred years old yet. What would it be like to exist for that long? For that matter, what about the next hundred years after that? She'd have to learn to count to higher numbers before she could know how old she and Luna would become.

Suddenly, Luna stiffened. She turned to Celestia with wide eyes and whispered "There's somepony outside."

Celestia rushed to the window. A horned shadow drifted across the grass below the moonlight, stretched and distorted from a source too far away to identify. "It's the same pony from before," said Luna, her voice shaking. Her eyes started to water. "He's here to hurt us. I know it."

"Don't say that."

"He followed us home. It's not fair."

The shadow melted into the darkness of the path. Celestia squinted and saw the pony approach the drawbridge.

"We have to keep him out," said Luna. The two of them dashed for the door and out into the main hall. Celestia slowed briefly, and then swallowed her hesitation as she charged towards the doors. As the two ponies were halfway down the hall, the doors swung open without warning, stopping them in their tracks.

"Celestia! Luna! There you are!"

"Mother!" Luna resumed dashing forward, this time beaming widely. Celestia advanced at a slower clip, still in shock from the moment's intensity. Their mother tucked away her wings and embraced Luna.

"I was so worried. I thought you were both still in the forest."

Luna's eyes widened at the mention of the forest. "There was a pony in the forest. I don't know who it was, but he ran away when I walked up to him."

Her mother stood up straight, tensing immediately. "A pony? What did he look like?"

"He was black, with blue eyes."

"Are you positive about this?"

Luna hesitated. "It was foggy and he stayed far away, but I think that's what he looked like."

Celestia began to feel disoriented by the gathering darkness, so she lit her horn as she stepped forward, alongside Luna. "There was something else, too—a strange black stick in the ground. It sunk down when we tried to touch it."

Her mother's expression unnerved her—it looked like fear, but since when was she afraid of anything?

"Mother," said Luna, "do you know a pony who looks like that?"

She tightened her lips and shook her head. "I wish I understood, but I don't."

Luna's jaw dropped. "But you know _everything!"_

"Not everything, Luna. This pony must have come from somewhere very far away. I wish I knew how and why he came here."

"He made me feel sick!" Luna said, her voice suddenly escalating in pitch and volume. "When I got close, I felt this bad feeling in my stomach, like I was going to get hurt. I don't think he's here to do anything nice."

"We don't know that for sure," said Celestia. "Maybe he seemed scary because we don't know anything about him."

Their mother shook her head. "I think Luna may be right. For now, I want you both to stay close to the castle no matter what. I'll find out what our new visitor wants"—she paused and swallowed, her voice growing slightly shaky—"and if he's friendly, only then may you speak to him. Do you understand?" They both nodded.

…

That night, as they settled down to sleep, Celestia found her eyes wandering towards the window. The moonlight illuminated wide swaths of grass, but the trees cast long, impenetrable shadows in which ambiguous hints of motion seemed to flicker. Just as she fell asleep, Celestia thought she saw a pair of fierce blue eyes against the inside of her eyelids.


	3. Chapter 3: The Tower

Chapter 3: The Tower

The cold, dry air seemed to buzz and crackle with a silent electrical tension around Twilight as she took steady, purposeful steps down the road, looking straight ahead the entire time. Her friends flanked her on either side, but she said nothing to them—for what was there to say?—and she refrained from looking at them—for how was she supposed to look?

Ponyville had never been a particularly busy town, but today, a strange silence pervaded the streets. Distant chatter, the hoofbeats of fillies who galloped rather than walked, the little bells that vendors sometimes rang to draw attention to their wares, and a hundred other noises Twilight had always taken for granted were now absent. Even the birds sounded subdued in their chirping, as though afraid they might offend.

In the corners of her eyes, Twilight noticed that ponies all over town were milling about uncertainly, their passage a feeble semblance of normal hoof traffic. As she and her friends neared an intersection, she saw a group of three earth ponies moving towards them. After a few steps, the pale yellow one in front stopped, looking confused and embarrassed, turned around, and led her friends down the street to the right.

"That's the right way, isn't it?" asked Rarity. It was the first time any of them had spoken in nearly ten minutes. Twilight looked at her, momentarily befuddled as she made sense of the sudden words.

"I think," she said slowly. As rare as occasion was to visit the Ponyville cemetery, Twilight had a hard time convincing herself she didn't know where it was. She'd seen it countless times from adjacent districts. Still, just as dead were a strange and unfamiliar folk, so too was their abode—and she intended it keep it that way.

The six of them entered a larger flow of traffic as they neared the cemetery, melding into a trickling river of slow-moving ponies. The sound of many soft hoofsteps drowned out all else, leaving Twilight in a kind of trance. She arrived in the cemetery well before she could see it; untamed, disheveled grass swarmed around her hooves and a tombstone made its presence known less than fifteen feet away from her. Judging by how tightly packed the crowd was, it seemed clear that Ponyville's living population vastly outnumbered its dead.

The ponies all fanned out, organizing themselves around a central location where a coffin lay next to an open, empty grave. Twilight's mouth twitched as she realized the coffin was open and saw the body sitting inside. She looked away before too many details could filter through her eyes. All she registered was a vague white shape that no pony was supposed to see.

From somewhere within the depths of the crowd, a wizened old grey pony shuffled forth, looking only a little less lost and bleak than the rest of the congregation. As he took his place next to the coffin, he adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, and spoke:

"We are gathered here today to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of Alabaster Crackle." Twilight racked her brain, trying to remember who that was. "He graced all of our lives, spreading cheer and warming all our hearts through his music. I daresay that Ponyville will be quieter and lonelier for his absence." Twilight glanced at Pinkie Pie, who merely shrugged. Didn't she know every pony in Ponyville?

"As we lay him to rest, let us always remember how he moved us, how he made us smile, how he helped make our days bright and full. Alabaster, you shall be missed."

Two petite pegasi stepped forward to lower the coffin into the grave. Twilight suddenly became aware of the furtive, disordered glances spreading throughout the crowd. Each pony seemed to be scanning all the others—but then, what were they looking for? What was the elusive information they all sought?

A few ponies at the fringes of the crowd began to disperse, signaling to the others that they now had permission to do the same. Twilight followed her friends in a slight daze, struggling to reorient herself as she returned to the streets. They meandered with no particular destination in mind, no goal except to distance themselves from the crowd, which reminded them of the funeral, which reminded them of the body, and so on.

"So," said Rainbow Dash slowly, "who _was _that?"

Rarity's eyes widened in that particular way which communicates either extreme shock or extreme agreement. "I was hoping one of you would know! I mean, I didn't want to say anything in case you _did, _but I was so worried going there that someone would find out I didn't know the deceased, and really, things could've gone _terribly_ for anyone who didn't, because just _imagine _being singled out as the one pony who had never even _met _Alabaster!"

"Imagine bein' the one who _had_, is more like it," said Applejack. "Didn't y'all notice how confused everypony looked? Not a one of 'em was mourin' or cryin' at all."

Pinkie Pie jumped in. "So _no_pony knew him? How is that even possible? How come _I _didn't know him?"

"Mr. Waddle knew him," mumbled Fluttershy from the back of the group. "He said something about music."

"But what instrument did he play?" asked Pinkie. "When was the last time we heard music in Ponyville?"

Everypony stayed silent, deep in thought. Twilight shivered. Was this simply what happened when a pony died? Did everyone who knew Alabaster suddenly forget him, his memory leaving the town just as his mind had left his brain? Maybe they all knew who he was before the funeral, but some dark magic had made them forget. The thought lingered for a moment before she dismissed it as superstition.

…

Some time later, she found herself in the library, hunched over a book, reading the same paragraph on transmutation spells again and again. The glare from her window shone in her eyes, so she moved a few feet to her right, only to find that the sun had caught up with her a few minutes later. She felt a twinge of guilt at returning to her daily affairs so readily after the funeral—but what was she supposed to do?

She heard a clatter and turned her head to see Spike wrestling with a pan too large for him to carry, half-carrying it and half-tripping over it.

"Spike," she said, "is there something wrong with me if I went to a pony's funeral, but didn't feel sad that he died?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Is that a trick question? You know I'm no good at paradoxes, right?"

She sighed. "It's just that no one there seemed to miss him. None of us even knew who he _was_. It felt wrong, like we were just being polite to him without any sincerity."

"Then why did you go? I mean, I didn't, and I feel fine."

She got up and started pacing. "We were supposed to go, I guess. Ponyville is small enough to be a tight-knit community… at least, in theory."

Spike flung out his arms. "Well, forget about theory! If he wanted the town to know who he was, it wouldn't have been hard. Maybe if it had been up to him, he wouldn't have _wanted_ a big funeral. Ever think of that?"

"I guess you have a point. After all, it's not like he's upset about what happened, right?"

The afternoon was filtering into sunset, and the patches of light from the windows took on lazy orange hues. It was as if the sun itself were shrugging at Alabaster in a jaded sort of way, suggesting on some vague level that life would go on without him, that these things just happened. What was anyone supposed to do?

…

That night, as she lay in bed, Twilight felt a cold, clear stillness pervade her room. The air held its breath, the moon stared through her window without blinking, and the shadows tensed like wildcats. Light and darkness met in sheer contrast in elongated lines across the floor and walls, cast through windows that glistened in that sterile, unpleasant way which is only possible in the dead of night. As she yawned, a ringing sound expanded inside her ears. She wondered absently if she was dreaming, and then she promptly fell asleep.

_The ringing sound followed her out across time and space, warbling frenetically as she touched down with a satisfying _crunch. _She stood at the apex of a stretching snowscape, with pure white hills stretching downwards and outwards in all directions from her position, all ending at white-capped tree-lines. The day was clear, and a bedazzling sheen issued from all the points of contact between sun and snow._

_ Twilight was surprised to see a set of hoofprints in front of her, leading off into the distance. As she stepped carefully around them, she realized that they seemed to have been left by somepony who had started near her and walked backwards. _

_ She leaned down and followed them down towards a wide, open path through the trees. All was silent, save for the constant crunching sound as she trudged through the fresh snow. She crossed a wooden bridge over a frozen stream which reflected darkened, distorted images of the branches up above. On an ecological scale, it was still a couple months early for life to be awake._

_ She rounded a sharp corner with a sense of growing apprehension. The path broadened out into a great clearing, with a sturdy stone tower standing in its center. As her eyes slowly moved up it and fell upon a massive, golden bell at the top, the ringing sound in her ears abruptly stopped._

_ She looked back down at the hoofprints, unsurprised to see them lead directly the tower door._ _As she made her way towards it, she reached out with her magic, creaking it open with excruciating slowness. By the time she'd reached the base of the tower, the door was open just wide enough for her to slip through._

_ The change in atmosphere was immediate and refreshing. Cool, ambient music wafted in through cracks in the floor and ceiling, and the bell began to toll in time. Tiny, scintillating particles swirled around, iridescent lights entered through the tall, tinted windows, and everything gave off a deliciously slow sense of intense, purposeful _rhythm _that Twilight couldn't help but be enthralled._

_She began stepping in time with the bell, ascending a clockwise spiral staircase up and around the column of swaying, particulate light running up the tower's center. Each step seemed to land with a supreme significance, echoing down into some hollow place below. After what felt like hours, she neared a huge wooden door at the top, its ring-shaped handle a good five feet above her head. The music reached a crescendo, the light intensified, and her eyes became wide and watery. The door let out a loud, dusty groan that bordered on a roar as she began to open it. The steps on which she stood seemed to vibrate furiously until she released her magical grip on the handle and resumed walking._

_ She found herself back outside, atop the tiled walkway surrounding the bell. As she circled around, she saw something that made her jump back. A black shape, framed starkly against the snowy panorama, was standing on the opposite side of the walkway._

_ She crouched down and peeked under the bell, hoping to observe this dark interloper without being noticed herself. She counted four hooves, and realized that this was the pony she'd been following. She slunk cautiously around, keeping low and close to the bell as she approached him. As she reached her destination, however, she saw nopony standing there. Thinking he'd gone around in the same direction, she turned around—only to be frozen in place by two brilliant blue eyes, no more than a foot away, boring into her with supernatural ferocity as unsteady, backwards music started playing somewhere inside her skull…_


	4. Chapter 4: The Herald

Chapter 4: The Herald

Out across the sprawling forests distant mountains, through a thin mist creeping in with the sunset, a speck of purest white began to shine, peeking over the horizon, glimpsed first and foremost by a pony standing atop a stone tower reaching out into the open air from the highest point of Castle Canterlot. The pony watched, unblinking, waves of silent but intense energy rippling out from her position and into the open air. Tense whispers shuddered through the air as sublime, cosmic chords echoed across the land.

Shimmering, iridescent ribbons of light issued from her horn, slithering away into the darkness like lustrous snakes as their reverberations traveled out into the atmosphere. All throughout the play of light, magic and sound, the distant white glimmer rose in increments of miles that appeared as fractions of inches. Soon it was above the mist, clearly visible as a bright pearl, framing vast stretches of long shadows with its pale light.

Luna squinted, withdrawing some her tendrils of magic from the night sky. As the moon approached its proper position, she thought she heard some distant, shrill cry. It grew steadily louder until an icy shudder of recognition passed through her, forcing her to release her grip on the moon completely. She knew what that sound was, but she couldn't yet accept it.

The ancient and terrible ringing around her was soon joined by a dizzying roar from within her ears. She galloped and stumbled towards the edge of the balcony, flew and flounders in spirals to the ground, and made for a large and ornate door leading out of the courtyard she'd landed in.

Her dread intensified as she passed through the moonlit stone corridors and the sound grew louder. She wondered how it was that the hallways hadn't flooded with a rush of screaming ponies, impelled by their deepest animal instincts to flee from the clarion call of the cruel and the unnatural. Or had they already escaped?

She rushed down a flight of stairs into the musty air of the forgotten passageways below the castle proper. As she left the reach of the moonlight, her horn became her only source of light, bobbing as she ran, sending her eyes flashes of dilapidated stone walls and dusty tapestries. The sound began to warble slightly, almost as if it were coughing on the ancient dust her hooves had stirred up.

The pounding in her ears served as a drumbeat to the ringing as she stepped from a hall into a vast, cylindrical room, spanned by a spiral stairway wrapped around a sturdy central pillar of stone which extended downwards some fifty yards into pitch darkness. Luna descended, trying to ignore the increasingly complex fluctuations in the ringing, the unsettling almost-words murmured by an unspeakable idea performing a crude imitation of a living animal. The sound continued to grow quieter yet more horrible until she reached the bottom of the stairs, where spidery whispers scuttled through her brain, tickling memories she thought she'd buried.

She stood still, save for her uncontrollable shaking. Before her, through a gap in the pillar, she saw something thin, metallic and black sliding slowly up the inside of the pillar, vibrating angrily. Luna felt colder than she'd ever thought possible, as though she were a hundred miles from the warmth of the surface. She'd been certain that there was more time—centuries, at the very least—yet here before her was an unmistakable sign that ponykind's oldest and greatest debt was soon to be collected.

…

The sunlight fell, hot and angry, upon Twilight's face. She blinked rapidly, grimaced, and lifted her sheets to cover her face. She'd been in the middle of something important, but couldn't remember what. There had been someone she was supposed to talk to, something of great importance she was meant to understand.

She was dimly aware of Spike walking past her doorway. "I meant to tell you something," she groaned, slurring her words and thumping a hoof against her bed.

"What?"

She slithered out of bed, shaking her head in attempt to rattle her brain into wakefulness. "Nevermind. It was just a dream."

It was a new day, and there was no need to remember yesterday's funeral. No sense of guilt over previous apathy crept into Twilight's stomach as she brushed her teeth. No sick, sinking sensation at the idea of her own eventual death weighed down on her heart, formed a lump in her throat, or caused her to shiver and bristle as she retrieved oats from her cupboard and ate them while looking out the window. No monumental sense of despair slithered through her veins, no anguish over the cruel joke of countless lives being born into a fantastic, wonderful world, only for each to disappear from it after the cosmic blink of an eye. Why should she feel gloomy on such a nice, sunny day?

She looked out at the ponies shuffling through the streets. They all seemed to have regained their usual hustle, carrying on with energy and confidence, yesterday's unpleasant inconvenience completely forgotten. The scene was a collage of bright eyes, smiles and sunshine.

As she moved towards the door, a strained, muffled cough issued from behind her. She turned in time to see Spike double over before exhaling a puff of green smoke which materialized into a scroll. With her magic, she caught it in midair and unrolled it while stepping forward to read:

_My dearest student Twilight,_

_Something urgent has come up. I must request that you and your friends meet me in Canterlot as soon as possible._

_-Princess Celestia_

Twilight blinked. Why wasn't there more information? What business could be so urgent that it prevented the princess from writing more than a couple sentences?

"Spike, the princess needs our help in Canterlot. You stay here while I go find out what's going on." She galloped out the door, and into the sunlight, her mind racing with a hundred possible things that might have gone wrong.

…

Within minutes, she had all five of her pony friends following behind her. "All the princess said was that something urgent was happening," she explained as they charged down the road towards Canterlot. In the distance, the castle dipped in and out of view as they navigated the contours of the land, rounding the grassy foothills of the sheer cliff-side into which the castle was built.

Rainbow Dash's eyes widened. "I bet it was Discord! He must've escaped his stone prison and started spreading chaos again!"

Twilight glanced over at the serene countryside sweeping out around the mountain, the castle standing high and proud, the crystalline waters that fell in trickles and cascades down from the rocky heights above. "I don't see any chaos."

"Maybe was Queen Chrysalis!" shouted Pinkie Pie. "She must've snuck her spies into the castle, and now Celestia's trying to figure out where they're hiding!"

As she spoke, they all quickened their pace. "I sure hope not," said Twilight, "but I guess we'll have to wait and see."

…

As they rounded the final curve of the road and the castle came into view, Twilight began scanning the parapets for some sign anything amiss. She glanced at her friends, shrugged, and began leading the way up over the drawbridge and through the gold-framed aperture that served as the main entrance.

They entered the throne room to see Celestia gazing out one of the windows. When she noticed them, she strode towards them, her regal gait reminding all but Twilight to bow.

"I'm glad you're all here," she said, though there was an edge of uncertainty to her voice. "I have very grave news: an ancient force, locked away for millennia, will soon make itself known in Equestria, wreaking destruction and attempting to subjugate all of ponykind."

Rainbow Dash's eyes narrowed. "Discord."

Celestia shook her head. "I'm afraid this is a foe even more insidious than he was. Right now, our enemy is already somewhere in Equestria, with an appearance no different from any other pony."

"Chrysalis!" exclaimed Pinkie, stomping her hoof. Again, Celestia shook her head.

"I don't mean that this is a pony who can shape-shift at will. He has come to Equestria twice before, with a different appearance each time." She strode over to the window, looking down the sheer cliff-side towards the warm, green vale that nestled Ponyville. "I've sent agents out to every neighboring city to monitor for unusual activity, but I'm afraid it may not be enough. That's why I need your help."

"You can count on us, Princess," said Twilight. "We'll use the Elements of Harmony to defeat him as soon as he makes himself known."

"Actually, I'm hoping it won't come to that. In order to be fully resurrected, this pony needs to gather three things he left behind the last time I defeated him. Even one or two could make him incredibly dangerous. However, because of their nature, I couldn't store them in the castle, and I can't abandon my post to retrieve them now."

"We understand, Princess," said Twilight. "We'll do whatever it takes to bring back the artifacts."

"I should warn you, all three are infused with dangerous and unpredictable magic. You should be ready for anything."

Rainbow Dash saluted. "We're prepared for danger, Princess. Just tell us where we need to go."

Celestia nodded. "Follow me."

She led them down a side hallway to a study filled with rows of bookcases on one side and a wide, oaken desk on the other. From amidst the dizzying collage of scrolls, cartographic instruments, yellowing tomes, and quills that covered the top of the desk, Celestia lifted up a large, heavily stylized map of Equestria.

"I've marked the last known locations of the artifacts on here," she said as she magically rolled up the scroll and passed it to Twilight, who briefly examined it before tucking it into her saddlebag. "I'm not sure how much time we have left, but it would be best if you began preparing for your journey as soon as possible."

Twilight nodded. "We won't let you down." Her friends chimed in their assent.

"Excellent. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finish reviewing the records of the last… visitation."

As they were on their way out, something struck Twilight—something about Celestia's explanation had seemed rushed and incomplete. As she turned back towards the princess, her friends halted to watch her. "Princess!" she called.

Celestia peered out from within the study. "Yes, Twilight?"

"This ancient, evil being that's going to attack Equestria… what is his name?"

"First of all, I'm not sure I would call him evil—just extremely dangerous. As for his name…" She hesitated, almost as though she needed a moment to remember—but why would that be? After a moment, she replied:

"Thunder Dasher."

Twilight blinked. What kind of a name was _that?_


	5. Chapter 5: The Heartache

Chapter 5: The Heartache

The sun reached its apex above six ponies as they traveled downhill through the verdant pass, following a gentle stream whose winding convolutions indicated the path of least resistance to the edge of the vast plains that lay beyond the mountains. Their destination was clearly visible, but the immense distance demanded that they stop to eat along the way.

"I think we should look around and confirm where we are," said Twilight as she retrieved the map from her saddlebags. Once it was laid out on a relatively dry and relatively flat patch of ground, she leaned down, located Canterlot, and began mentally tracing the path they'd taken through the foothills.

Rarity gave the map a quick glance in between unpacking their sandwiches. She stopped, letting one hover in midair as she did a double-take. "What's that wing inside the red circle?" While she was distracted, Pinkie walked past her, grabbing the sandwich out of the air with her mouth.

"I assume we're looking for something with a wing carved on it," said Twilight, squinting at the place Rarity had indicated. "Or maybe a wing made from some kind of metal? It's not really clear."

"I was thinking of asking Celestia for more explanation," said Fluttershy, "but she seemed like she was in such a hurry."

Twilight shrugged. "If we're still confused when we get there, we can always send Celestia a letter."

They continued to study the map as they ate. Twilight observed that their path across the plains would lead them away from any main roads, out into a stretch of wilderness to the east. The wing, or whatever it was, seemed to be inside a large cave in north side of a large mountain. Scanning the rest of the map, she saw a second wing far to the north of Canterlot, atop the peak of one of the Crystal Mountains. "We should go there next," she said, pointing to it. "It's another wing, so we'll know what to look for by then."

Pinkie leaned down, squinting at the southern portion of the map as she swallowed the last of her sandwich. "What's that thing there?"

Twilight slid the map towards herself, revealing the part that was obscured by Pinkie's face. She recognized the reddish terrain as dragon migration lands, but the circled symbol…

"Is that a _skull?"_ asked Rarity. It certainly looked to be, and whatever it was, it seemed to be inside some kind of fortress.

"What kind of artifacts _are_ these?" asked Applejack_._

"I guess they're the kind left behind by an ancient and terrible force," said Twilight. She couldn't help but wonder what details Celestia had chosen to keep from her, and why. What about this foe was so terrible that she and her friends shouldn't fight him, especially given the kinds of enemies they'd overcome before? Why had she said he was dangerous, but not evil?

Pinkie waved dismissively, blowing a raspberry. "Whatever. It's nothing new, right? Collecting weird magical artifacts and defeating ancient monstrosities is pretty much our thing at this point."

"I guess so. Come to think of it, Celestia decided not to tell me anything about Nightmare Moon before we went up against her, so maybe there are some things we're supposed to learn on our own."

They finished eating and set off, now making visible progress towards the plains. Twilight found herself lingering behind the others, glancing over her shoulder, squinting into the shadows cast by towering evergreens. She wondered what she was watching out for.

"I've been thinking about the funeral," she said without meaning to. She blushed as she felt her friends' eyes land on her. "Standing so close to a dead body felt… weird."

"Everypony always says they look like they're sleepin'," said Applejack, shaking her head. "It ain't so. He looked like… he wasn't a pony no more, just some kinda' _thing._"

Rarity nodded. "It was like a mannequin or a scarecrow. Shaped like a pony, just… not quite right."

"I don't want that to happen to me."

Again, Twilight blushed. Her friends watched her tentatively, all slowing down while she passed them. When she didn't turn around, Pinkie trotted up alongside her. "That's normal, isn't it? Hardly anypony _wants_ to die."

Twilight nodded, biting her lip. "Being there at the funeral, though… it reminded me that the same thing is going to happen to me someday, too. It's terrifying to think about."

"That's life, ain't it?" said Applejack. "We live until we're sick o' livin', then we stop. Why worry while we're still young?"

"Because when I stop and think about it, a lifetime doesn't seem like that long. Some animals, like dragons, get to live for thousands of years. Alicorns are immortal. Compared to that, living eighty or ninety years seems like nothing."

"That's a matter of perspective, isn't it?" said Rarity. "By that logic, I should imagine rabbits and squirrels must be quite jealous of us."

"They are," confirmed Fluttershy from the back of the group.

Twilight's breath caught in her throat and her stomach felt uneasy. "So this isn't something any of you think about a lot?"

"Dying, you mean?" asked Rarity.

For a few seconds, the only sound was of their hooves shuffling down the slope. Then, Twilight said: "Yeah. It just seems so wrong that every pony who lives should have to die. It's not like anyone deserves to."

"Of course they don't," said Rainbow Dash, flying up alongside her, "but being alive in the first place is a pretty good deal if you ask me. You just need to get back your sense of adventure. The meaning of life is to _live_. If you can manage that, then it's worth it."

Twilight nodded. "I guess I feel a little better. Maybe someday all of this will make more sense."

…

By the time they reached the plains, the day had settled into a sultry, lazy afternoon, forecasting the impression that it had done all it was going to do and was simply waiting for night to arrive. As the sun began to set, the ponies set up camp, laying their sleeping bags on a dry patch of dirt beneath the clear night sky. Twilight gazed out across the mountainous horizon, trying to ignore the lump in her throat and the heartache that tugged at her like a needy foal.


	6. Chapter 6: The Construct

Chapter 6: The Construct

Upon a vast, smooth plane of marble, a thin strand from a husk of corn gradually began to wriggle. It twitched violently for a few seconds before resolving into a gentle, undulating motion, following a rhythm of a certain someone's heartbeat. One end twisted and twirled, leaving an upward spiral in its wake as it slipped through the air. Below it, other strands began to follow suit, rising and falling, spinning and sliding, wrapping around each other and separating while leaving delicate points of contact behind.

Subtle knots began to form between the strands, though none were taut or stationary enough to be easily identified as knots. They drew inwards, all dancing with one another but almost never touching. Soon more than thirty of the tiny ribbons had been joined in the intricate matrix, shivering and twisting tight as they began the transition from graceful motion to a graceful shape. Boundaries formed, curves were defined, and in one final instant each strand pulled tight into its final shape, forming a sleek, visibly hollow figurine of a pony standing on the tabletop.

Two young ponies leaned over the figurine, wide-eyed and breathless, as their mother smiled from behind them. "You haven't seen the best part," she said, her voice echoing gently upon the stone walls and washing over her daughters like a warm tide. As she lowered her head and her horn began to glow, the corn husk pony began to tremble. It slowly raised its wings, spreading and stretching them as a butterfly might. The left hoof reached out, stretching, pulling the body along with it, issuing dry shuffling noises from its joints. The tiny pony took a few tense, halting steps before breaking into a steady, graceful gallop, seeming to swim through the air.

It transitioned seamlessly into flight, its hooves treading empty space as its wings gently coaxed their way through the air. It made wide circles around the fillies' heads, prompting them to twist and turn and trip over one another. As Celestia struggled up, she something touch her nose and froze. Her eyes crossed as she tried to examine the pony inches in front of her, which tilted its head in a posture of amusement. As she sneezed, it jumped off, soaring up out of reach and circling the room.

Its wings caught the sunlight from the windows, refracting it into sublime, rainbow-colored shadows that danced across the walls. The sisters' breath became slow and tentative, hesitant to obfuscate even the smallest noise from the creation.

The pony began to descend, leaning sideways as one grand, final arc brought it down onto the table, its rear hoof barely catching on the edge. It slowed to a trot, appearing to walk for the first time. Luna took the opportunity to lean over it, twisting her head and trying to stare into its head, the same way a pony might look another in the eyes. As the pony craned its neck upwards, its horn poked her nose and she jumped backwards with start, her rear hooves scrabbling for safer ground.

As Celestia laughed, something occurred to her. "Mother, is this pony for me or Luna?"

She shook her head. "It doesn't belong to anyone. This isn't like the other ponies we've made. It flies because it wants to fly. It's free, so we should let it be." As she spoke, she opened a window, letting the gentle breeze catch the pony's attention. It tensed, still save for intermittent, rustling shivers. Then, shifting its weight with the carriage of a much larger creature, it began to gallop, crouched, and then jumped forward and upward, soaring out the window and into the open air. The three ponies inside watched it disappear, quickly becoming a speck that faded into a memory, a daydream so immediately distant that it might as well have happen years ago, or never at all.

…

That night, Celestia discovered Luna in their room, staring intently at a jade figurine of a pony which she had set on the floor. "I'm trying to make it move," she said without looking up. A single spark issued from her horn and the jade pony fell on its side. Luna groaned in frustration.

"Did you ask Mother how to do it?"

"She's asleep."

Luna propped the jade pony back up and redoubled her efforts. No matter how hard Luna strained herself, it refused to budge. She squinted and leaned over it, as though willing it to run away in terror. As Celestia watched her, a flash of light from somewhere outside stole her attention. She dashed to the windowsill, hopping up and placing her front hooves against the glass.

"Did you see something?" asked Luna as she joined her sister.

"I think there' s someone outside." Celestia lit her horn, pointing a narrow beam towards the grass outside. Her heart leapt as she detected movement, but the beam revealed a branch swaying in the wind. She slowly scanned the hillsides, not blinking and hardly breathing.

Luna nudged her. "I think I saw something over there," she whispered, pointing. Celestia tried to follow with the light, passing over a stream.

"Where?" she asked.

"Closer."

"There?" the light landed on a squirrel, which immediately scampered away.

"No, closer. It's holding still now but I still see it."

Celestia saw it before the light had reached it: a dark shape against the grass, some twenty yards from the base of the wall. The light began to tremble as it moved closer, and Luna drew closer to Celestia, ducking her head slightly so that she was barely peering over the windowsill.

As the light reached its target, Luna gasped and the shock brought sudden, tiny tears to Celestia's eyes. Staring up at them was a black pony, looking up at them with eyes that gleamed bright with reflected light.

At once, Celestia's light went out and both sisters ducked behind the sill, breathing heavily. They stared into each other's eyes, communicating an unspoken, glistening fear through the darkness. Celestia felt a strange, bewildering electricity course through her, a sudden hypersensitivity to her own flesh and blood.

"He knows where we live," whimpered Luna in a high, shaky voice Celestia had never heard before. "We can't stay here anymore."

"Maybe Mother will know what to do. Let's ask her."

They scrambled down the hallway, slowing down to glance around each corner. As they passed under the engraved marble archway that marked their mother's room, they began calling out to her in sharp, hushed pleas, which quickly dissolved into frantic ululations, confused cries urging her to wake up, protect them, make the world feel safe again, assure them that by tomorrow the sun would burn away the fog of fear and despair pervading their senses.

The eldest alicorn stirred slowly, in halting shudders. "What's wrong?" she asked, blinking blearily out of some elusive dream with visible disappointment.

"He's back," said Luna, shifting her diminutive weight forward as if to emphasize her proclamation. "The black pony I saw in the forest—he's standing outside, looking into our room."

Their mother jolted her head up as her eyes flared wide open. She leapt from her bed to the doorway with the grace of a much smaller creature and galloped down the hallway, followed shortly by her daughters. Celestia thought to herself that the black pony would surely be gone by the time they got there, that her mother would assure her he had been nothing more than a flight of her and Luna's collective imaginations. _Go back to bed,_ she would say. _There's nothing to be afraid of._

When Celestia arrived at the window, she saw Luna hopping up alongside their mother, who was shining a moonbeam down onto the ground. Celestia's stomach sank and her legs shook as she moved closer and spotted the same dark shape below.

"I'm going outside," their mother said softly, her mouth barely moving enough to form the words. "Don't follow me."

The two sisters watched uncertainly as she strode out towards the front gate, out of sight. Suddenly, they were once again alone with the terrible figure, as if by rounding the corner in the hallway, their mother had disappeared from the world. Luna ducked, and pressed herself against the wall below the sill, but Celestia kept watching, intent on seeing what would happen.

After a long, breathless silence, the radiant form that meant _safe_ appeared out on the grass, moving steadily towards the stranger. As the two drew closer, staring evenly at one another, Celestia noticed that her mother was slightly shorter than the other pony. Something about this seemed deeply unsettling and fundamentally wrong, though she couldn't say why. The two exchanged words that were impossible to her from this distance, neither of their faces conveying any clear emotion. She shook her head; he went silent for several seconds; she lightly stomped her front hoof as she spoke; he gestured up towards the window; she drew back.

"It looks like she's afraid of him," said Celestia.

"No! She's not afraid of anything. She'll make him leave, just wait."

Below, the two bodies began circling each other, the larger continually pushing the smaller backwards with some invisible force that could only have been fear. She was begging; staring in stark disbelief at what he was saying or what he was; nodding desperately as he spoke.

The two held still for several seconds before the black pony slowly turned to walk away, uphill, towards the forest. Their mother watched him, not daring to move until the light from her horn no longer struck him. She took a few unsteady steps backwards before whipping around and heading back towards the castle at an agitated trot.

Celestia glanced at Luna, whose crestfallen face mirrored her own sense that they'd been cheated of something precious and unnamed. As the hoofsteps of their mother echoed towards them, they turned to see her approaching with the same forced, neutral expression she'd worn on her way outside.

"I've settled things with him," she said, her voice constricted and hoarse. "Both of you are going to be safe."

"Then what's wrong?" asked Luna. "Why are you upset?"

She shook her head. "Try to forget about it. Forget about the black pony. Forget about what bad things you think might happen, and just try to focus on the things you're looking forward to." She paused, swallowed, and took a shuddering breath. "He's not going to bother us at all tomorrow. It's a brand new day that we'll have all to ourselves, and we're going to make the most of it. No hiding or worrying. We'll do whatever you two want to do. It'll be a big day, so just try and get some sleep, all right?"

Neither of them slept that night.


	7. Chapter 7: The Cave

Chapter 7: The Cave

"We're making good time. We should reach the cave before much nightfall."

Twilight squinted at the map as she spoke, hovering it in front of her for a few moments longer before returning it to her saddlebag. As the image of the wing lingered in her mind, she felt a strange urgency nagging at her, as though she'd forgotten something of immense importance. Had she seen that wing before? It looked familiar, but then again, there wasn't anything particularly unusual about it.

"I'm guessin' we won't just be able to march in there and snatch the wing," said Applejack "It's probably protected by all kinds 'a magic 'n traps 'n whatnot."

"Hey, yeah," said Rainbow Dash. "It sounded like no one's been to this cave in ages, so there's no telling who might've moved in."

Twilight glanced over her shoulder. Did Rainbow Dash's wings look like the ones on the map? She quickly realized what an absurd suspicion this was. "We'll go in carefully. I'll have a spell ready to detect anyone who tries to sneak up on us."

Pinkie Pie bit her lip. "What if there's someone in there who knows about that spell, and it doesn't work on them? What if they have a spell that lets them see _your_ spells, and then they cast counter-spells to all of them so none of them work?"

Twilight shook her head. "There's almost no chance of that. First of all, I'll be able to tell if the entrance is enchanted from a distance, and second of all, magic doesn't work that way."

Pinkie looked at Fluttershy and shook her head in a discouraging sort of way, but said nothing. Twilight turned her attention towards the surrounding landscape. As they followed the foothills of the mountain range, the vegetation became increasingly sparse, transitioning from a dense myriad of mosses, grasses, flowers, and ferns, to stringy, thirsty-looking shrubs poking out of the tall, dusty buttresses which had flanked their right side for the entire journey. Up above was the sort of jagged, rocky terrain whose unfriendly visage inspired few mental images aside from broken limbs and immediate regret.

"Rainbow Dash," said Twilight, "can you scout higher up the mountain to see if the cave is there?" The pegasus nodded before taking flight, rapidly shrinking the distance until she'd risen past a towering ridge which had been blocking their view. She turned towards the mountain and darted from side to side like a hummingbird inspecting a flower. She briefly dipped out of sight, cutting across the mountainside towards the path ahead. After several seconds she reappeared, waving at her friends below.

"Is she shouting something?" asked Rarity, squinting in an effort to hear her better. Twilight perked her ears up and detected the faint sound of Rainbow Dash's voice echoing down the slope.

_"We can't hear you!"_ shouted Pinkie. _"Come closer!"_

Rainbow Dash appeared not to hear her, either—she remained where she was, bobbing slightly hundreds of yards above them, shouting something and waving her hooves. When she received no response, she descended in a wide arc, carrying with her a powerful rush of wind that made her friends stumble slightly as she landed. She stared at the ground, panting for a few seconds before swinging her head up in a drunken sort of way. "I _said_ there's a cave way up ahead we can reach if we stay on this path."

Twilight took a step towards her. "What did it look like?"

Rainbow Dash shrugged. "Like a big hole in the side of a mountain. I didn't see any traps or monsters or whatever."

"That doesn't mean there aren't any," Pinkie Pie said grimly, nudging Fluttershy.

As they forged on, Twilight thought she detected a faint but peculiar smell coming from the earth or the air. It was stale, cold, and metallic, somewhere between blood and camphor, with a hint of aged paper. More than anything, it smelled like resigned sadness—a haunting, soulful tune turned smell. She sneezed.

Along with the smell, she felt a noticeable drop in the temperature, though it might have been wind-chill. She glanced over at Fluttershy, who was darting her eyes around, afraid of something unseen. That was normal enough, she decided—until she realized her other friends were doing the same thing.

"Anypony else get the feelin' we're bein' watched?" asked Applejack.

_"Shh,"_ hissed Rarity. "Do you hear that?"

At once, they all stopped walking. Twilight heard a high, unbroken ringing noise, though she couldn't tell where it was coming from.

Rainbow Dash grimaced. "There's no mistaking it. Whatever's making that sound must be in the cave."

Fluttershy whimpered. "We're not still going in there, are we?"

"What's so bad about that noise?" asked Twilight. Everypony turned to stare at her. "It sounded like it was just the wind… and even if it _is_ coming from the cave, we'll be that much better off for the warning, won't we?"

The long silence that followed was a firmer _no_ than anypony present could have verbally delivered. "Twilight," said Rarity slowly, "you _do_ hear it, don't you?"

"Yeah. It's just some weird ringing… like the kind you hear when it's completely silent, only louder."

As she spoke, Fluttershy leaned to the side, awkwardly clutching her head in her hooves and staring at the ground with a strained, terrified expression. "It's getting louder."

"I guess, but…"

Rarity cried out in pain. In seconds, five ponies lay contorted on the dust, desperately covering their ears with their hooves and groaning with pain and fear. The sixth ran first towards Applejack, who was the closest, then to Fluttershy, who appeared to be getting the worst of it, and then around them all in a circle as soon as she realized she had no idea how to help them.

"Stay calm," she urged over their lamentations. "We just need to go into that cave and deal with whatever's making that sound!"

As she spoke, the sound suddenly ceased. Her friends all breathed heavily for a while. As Applejack made the first effort to rise, Twilight rushed over to help her up.

"'Spose yer made of sterner stuff than the rest of us, Twilight," she said in a tone too serious for it to be a compliment. "That noise didn't seem t'affect you one bit." Twilight blushed.

"We need to move quickly," she said in lieu of a response. "The sooner we can get the wing out of that cave, the better."

Once everyone was back on their hooves, they forged on, following the path around a sharp bend. Further ahead, it zigzagged up a roughly terraced rock-face, effectively providing a way up a gently sloping section o the mountain. As Twilight followed the trail's course with her gaze, she alit on its end.

"The cave!" gasped Pinkie. It was more or less as Rainbow Dash had described: a moderately large, roundish, ribbed opening where the path intersected with a nearly vertical surface. It was the sort of cave someone might reasonably draw if asked to draw a cave. Suspecting it was far from ordinary, however, the ponies held their ground, engaging the cave-shaped cave in a tense stare-down, with each party daring the other to make the first move. When the cave took no action, Rainbow Dash broke into a gallop, charging ahead as if to intimidate the aperture into a hasty retreat.

"Rainbow, wait!" called Twilight. The pegasus continued to run ahead with her friends chasing behind her, closing a little over half the distance before slowing to a stop near the beginning of the zigzagging section.

Twilight struggled to catch her breath as she caught up with Rainbow Dash. "We have to be _careful,_ remember? We can't go charging in until we have some idea of what we're dealing with." When there was no response, she circled around to look her friend in the eye. She discovered an expression of focused concern and decisive hesitation. It looked as though the cave had returned Rainbow Dash's show of intimidation and left her seriously considering leaving this whole business to sort itself out.

"What's wrong?" asked Twilight.

Rainbow Dash's ears twitched and her nostrils flared. "Something in there moved just now. It was real quiet, just as you were all catching up. I think it was deep inside, and the echo just barely made it out."

"Well, what's the matter?" asked Rarity in a tone suggesting she knew the answer. "We've dealt with all sorts of monsters before. Why should whatever's in there give us pause? I'm sure it can't be any worse than a chimera, or an ursa major, or a hydra…" As she spoke, she strode past Rainbow Dash and up the path, holding her head high. She made it about fifteen feet before she stopped, turned around, and stared uncertainly at Twilight, who was baffled.

Fluttershy cleared her throat. "You did say you were going to use magic to keep anyone from sneaking up on us, didn't you?"

"_Yes!_" shrieked Rarity. "She's absolutely right; you _did_ say that, and looking at it logically, I'd say it would make a good deal of sense for you to—that is to say, out of all of us, _you _would be the best-suited to…"

Twilight sighed. "I'll go in first."

Rarity's eyes fluttered into a perfect picture of surprise. "Are you _sure?_ I mean, it's quite noble of you to offer, and I suppose your spells _will_ keep you safe…" As Twilight trudged up the path, the other unicorn followed close behind her, not missing a beat: "Well, if you're absolutely _positive_ you don't mind, then I shan't jeopardize our cohesion by challenging your decision…" She trailed off as she noticed Applejack giving her a concerned shake of the head.

Twilight lit her horn as she passed the rim of the cave, examining the dusty floor for anything of interest. The first thing she noticed was that the smell from outside the cave was stronger inside. Her hoof-steps echoed out into the darkness behind the bend up ahead.

"What's in there?" called Pinkie's voice from behind her.

"I don't see anything yet." Sensitive tendrils of magic drifted out past her field of view, shivering at the slightest gust of wind and relaying each tiny sensation back to her. She traced out the walls, gradually building a picture of a widening tunnel, but it was an imperfect method of scouting. As ponies shuffled in behind her, she said "We'll need a decoy."

Rarity flicked her ears. "Pardon?"

Pinkie Pie shuffled in front of her and raised a hoof. "I'll do it."

"I don't mean one of us. I'll make one." Twilight knelt down next to the wall and began siphoning out dust with magic. She probed around for rocks, but there didn't seem to be any, so she balled the dust up, compressed it tightly together, and set it rolling out into the cave.

The ponies listened breathlessly to the soft sounds it made as it tumbled over bumps in the ground. It bounced quickly downhill, ran up against the wall as it reached another bend, reversed to make the turn, and suddenly stopped.

Twilight grasped frantically with her magic, trying to glean any information she could from the thing, but the sensations it sent her became increasingly vague and numb.

"Did somethin' stop it?" whispered Applejack.

Twilight shook her head. "Nothing's holding it or breaking it. I'm not sure what"—

_Thump._ It sounded like a clumsy hoof-step or a graceful fall, but there was certainly some weight behind it. The sound repeated itself a few more times, shuddering through the frozen ponies, becoming gradually quieter. It occurred to Twilight that letting… whatever was down there escape might be more dangerous than confronting it, so she began slinking forward, treading as lightly as she could. She rounded the first bend while craning her head, trying to cast light as far back as possible. Behind her, her friends began to advance with a confused shuffle of crowded walking. The hoof-steps further down reached a consistent volume, so she settled into a steady pace, prepared to turn off the light the moment it landed on anything large and terrifying.

Suddenly, the hoof-steps ahead stopped, as did the ponies. This struck Twilight as an ominous turn—it was possible her quarry had found a hiding place. She kept moving, slower than before, transferring her weight onto each new step as though she stood on the back of a sleeping dragon. She reached the spot where the ball of dust should have been and knelt down to examine the ground. There was indistinct evidence of some sort of disturbance, but the dust bore no prints or other notable shapes.

The tunnel soon widened into a long hallway with a checkerboard pattern carved into the floor. Weathered, once-white pillars flanked the sides, each merging gradually into the rough-hewn, arched ceiling. As Twilight counted all of the places she couldn't see, she swallowed a lump in her throat and briefly wondered how she'd become the leader of this spelunk before remembering the sound. She wondered what _they_ had heard, exactly. Had there been tones outside of her hearing range? More importantly, what kind of creature would have made such a noise?

She breathed a fleeting sigh of relief every time she shone light on an empty space behind a pillar, or into an alcove. She discovered carvings in the walls which were too indistinct to make sense of, along with—

Several sharp intakes of breath issued from behind her as the light fell on something pony-shaped. Twilight remained perfectly tensed for several seconds before realizing it wouldn't do to start a fight with a cramp and taking a few steps forward. "Hello?" she called out, immediately feeling silly. A few more steps informed her that whatever the thing was, it wasn't a pony. The eyes were empty sockets; the open mouth revealed crooked, unnaturally small teeth that were the same faded, brown-grey color as the mouth and the rest of the body; and the entire thing was far too still to be alive.

"Well, that's a relief," said Pinkie.

A sharp rasping sound shot from the thing's mouth like an arrow. Twilight yelped and jumped back, bumping into her friends who were reacting likewise. The abomination advanced, tilting its head at odd angles and pointing each of its sockets towards the ponies in turn, as though it were struggling to see. Dry creaks and puffs of dust hissed from its joints with each step, its teeth chattered slightly, and its jaw swung from side to side as though it might fall off.

Try as she might, Twilight couldn't push her way back through her frantic friends, who had become entangled in their effort to retreat. The thing came close enough that Twilight received a face-full of its breath, at which point she finally understood where the smell had been coming from.

As it made a sudden lunge, a burst of crackling, purple energy shot from her horn, knocking the thing back and slamming it against a pillar with a _crack_ like a firework. Time felt slower and the air felt heavier as Twilight watched two halves of a pony fall to the ground.

The silence that followed was a medium thinner than air, through which motions of light and thought were instantaneous. The thing's most identifiable characteristic had that it wasn't a pony, and now it was just as clearly not dead, but _broken_. Someone had put it here; it had attacked Twilight, presumably because she wasn't—whatever it was; and there might be more. All of these observations nested themselves in Twilight's mind at once, shuddering through her like a nasty static shock from the dry, lifeless air.

It was a deeply uncanny silence, so Twilight couldn't help feeling some relief when Pinkie decided to break it: "You guys! That thing was a _zombie pony!"_

No sooner had Twilight processed the words than she immediately took the return to ordinary reality for granted and raised an annoyed eyebrow. "Pinkie, I can promise you it's not a zombie pony." Before she had time to think about what she was doing, she trotted over to the thing's remains, knelt down, and closely examined the newly exposed surfaces of its insides. "It's a golem," she announced with audible relief. "It's nothing but dust, shaped and animated with magic." To illustrate, she stepped lightly one of the hooves, which immediately lost its shape, billowing outward and upward.

Rainbow Dash stepped forward. "We heard hoof-steps right after you lost control of that ball of dust. Do you think"—

Twilight slapped her forehead. "Of course! Someone must have interrupted my spell to create that thing. But who?"

None of them knew the answer, and the cave certainly wasn't going to tell them.


	8. Chapter 8: The Tree

Chapter 8: The Tree

It was a grey day in Cloudsdale. How was that possible? Through the cool, dense haze, a lone pegasus crept through empty streets, delicate swirls of mist stirring at his hooves with each step.

When he'd woken up that morning, he'd assumed it was still nighttime. By all appearances, the city looked to be asleep—but that seemed unlikely given the slender, shimmering rays of sunlight that slipped past the dense haze as unassuming envoys of the sun.

No one had been home that morning, though that was hardly unusual. He squinted at the rows of tall, opaque windows that lined the faces of houses half-submerged in cloud, but there didn't seem to be anyone home. He thought he detected movement from time to time, but each time he would turn to see an anomaly in the mist dispersing—a particularly familiar or particularly alien shape spreading sadly into sameness with a silent _nevermind._

He called out into the ominous silence and immediately regretted it, as one does. He experienced a creeping superstition which equimorphosed the silence, filling it with a cruel amusement at his obvious fear.

Or was it a superstition? A dark, solid shape lurked in the corner of his eye, disappearing whenever he turned his head towards it. Something echoed through the mist: a single hoof-step.

He stopped, staring straight ahead. He had no idea which direction the sound had come from. Instead of surprise, he felt a strange calm. This was no stranger lurking in the shadows, watching and judging him from the mind of an _other. _It was as though whoever was watching him had been doing so all his life, shuffling unobtrusively through his dreams, and looking over his shoulder at the world as he perceived it, as though it were a particularly interesting jigsaw puzzle.

He the pony's name, but he knew now that there was no need to call out—there was nothing to say. A black alicorn didn't so much enter his field of view as shift into focus, resolving from a vague blur as ubiquitous as afterimages into a clear, solid shape.

The alicorn came to a stop in front of him. "It's time for you to wake up, Thunder Dasher." The voice was unusually even and articulate, but it didn't sound like the voice of an immortal.

"You're him." This was one of those moments in which understanding a thing is as natural as breathing, but describing it is impossible.

"I'm exactly what you expected. I'm here to tell you everything you were ready to hear me say. In fact, you can say it."

Thunder Dasher's thoughts rushed backwards in time, trying to pinpoint what exactly he was meant to discuss. The loneliness of his childhood stung him—not painfully, but as a playful nip meant to remind. "All the other ponies take the world for granted." He had to stop and take in the words after he'd spoken them, wondering whether they were true or not.

"They're like animals," agreed the alicorn. "They don't know what's going to happen to them. Every night, they fall asleep smiling and dream lies. Then, one day, they don't wake up."

Thunder Dasher shivered. "I envy them. I don't dream at all."

"Reality isn't something to dream about."

The sunlight seemed to burn through the curtains of mist around him with the same affect as his thoughts, which swirled and resolved from permutating, doubtful vagaries into a clear, directed stream. "I hate to imagine anyone else outliving me. It's not fair."

"Life bears all the marks of a cruel joke told by a spiteful god. Think about it: a plant cannot think. Animals can, but they don't _know_ that they can think. Ponies are among the few animals that not only know they can think, but know that they will stop thinking—and yet, most of the time, they don't think about it."

"You're describing a hierarchy."

"You and I are the unluckiest of all. We're at the top."

His heart beat faster, and a sudden sense of purpose coursed through him. "I understand now. The reason I've always felt different from other ponies is because their minds don't let them make that full connection."

"Accurately imagining their own nonexistence is just barely out of their grasp. There's one last step missing; they're one little _click_ away from understanding a kind of horror they haven't invented words for. We lack the filter that every other living thing has."

A chill ran through the pegasus, dancing and skittering across his nerves with the impassive alacrity of a hundred spiders. "I have a choice to make, don't I?"

The alicorn tilted his head up. "You or them."

Thunder Dasher shook his head, and kept shaking it longer than one does for the sake of communication. "I was wrong. That's not a choice at all."

"I felt the same way once I understood."

He felt the clouds beneath him taking a shaky breath, expanding upward. The mist seemed to be rising quickly as well, rushing past his face in a confusing, exhilarating assault on his sense of direction. He stumbled backwards, trying to blink the problem away and making it worse. As placeless light flooded his eyes, he heard his old friend telling him two things. The first was his real name, which he'd already guessed by this point but which still evoked deeply confused feelings. The second was one of those goodbyes between friends, the kind that doesn't need the word _goodbye:_

"Try not to hate yourself."

…

The air in the cave grew colder as the ponies descended a long set of stairs. Even though her horn shone brightly, Twilight found the silence just as oppressive as complete darkness. She spent several wistful seconds thinking of birdsong before she remembered that she could talk.

"Try to stay spread out. We'll all need room to move if another dust golem shows up."

"I'm not worried about those things," said Rainbow Dash, suddenly striding past Twilight. "Did you see how that one split clean in half? It was a _pushover_. It was only scary when we all thought it was some kind of dead pony."

"Does anyone else feel that?" asked Fluttershy. Twilight tensed, suspecting her friends were about to become incapacitated by another invisible force. Instead, she felt a cool breeze wafting from further down the tunnel.

"A way out," announced Twilight. Spurred by the promise of some unknown prize, she sped up, stretching her magic as far around the next bend as it would reach. Soon she was surrounded by the crowded echoes of galloping, which left her head spinning as she emerged into a spacious, roughly dome-shaped vault with a thin ray of what appeared to be sunlight shining through a gap in its apex, illuminating flecks of dust spiraling downwards towards…

"A tree?" Pinkie Pie glanced around at the others. "_That's_ not what we're looking for, is it?"

The tree's roots wandered above and below uneven layers of dust, giving the distinct impression of an animal that had tried and failed to bury itself. The leaves, however, looked dense and robust, almost glistening under the little light that struck them.

More than anything else, the tree looked like a trap. Applejack began to approach it indirectly, circling clockwise around the edge of the cavern. She glanced back at Twilight. "See if yer magic can find any traps. If they're anywhere, they're bound to be here."

Twilight nodded. She'd already been probing the room with magic, but only reflexively. She now gave the task her full attention, searching for anything out of place. She started by feeling out the tree. _Nothing on its roots,_ she thought. Nor were there any spells on the surface of its bark. Holding her breath, she let her magic wander gradually up the trunk, towards the branches…

She drew back as a familiar hiss issued from the wall to her left. She turned to see Applejack jump away from a pony-sized, pony-shaped cascade of dust falling to the ground, clumsily shaking itself off, and turning towards its prey.

Applejack braced herself, standing with her side to the golem. As it lumbered closer, crouching like an overgrown, hulking cat, she turned her back towards it and bucked just in time to catch it mid-pounce, knocking it back with a satisfying _crack._

"Ha!" said Applejack. "Ain't this cave got anythin' better to throw at us than dusty ol' golems, full o'"—

She stopped short as a deep rumbling sound filled the air. She walked backwards towards her friends, her eyes darting around at the walls. They huddled uncertainly for a moment before Rainbow Dash leapt away, whipped around towards them and shouted "Get away from the walls!"

Twilight's eyes widened as she realized what was happening. The rumbling reached a deafening pitch as everypony scrambled outwards, just in time to avoid the first golem bursting out from where they'd just been standing, swinging its head carelessly about as it stumbled towards them. On the opposite wall, two more emerged. Their shoulders clashed, each stubbornly shoving past the other in pursuit of six of the seven living things in the room.

One by one, golems continued to emerge from all sides. Fluttershy yelped and jumped into the air, where her frantic wings carried her into the tree's sturdy arms. As she wrapped her trembling hooves around a branch and stared down, Twilight followed her gaze to see a dull-grey-colored hoof reaching up from the ground, either searching for leverage or making a beckoning gesture. (Twilight forced herself to assume the former.)

A second hoof soon joined the first, and then both forehooves planted themselves on the ground, pushing up a head whose empty sockets and gnashing maw cascaded tiny landslides of dust. As the golem climbed out of the ground, others followed suit, falling into the ranks of the horde still approaching from the walls.

As the automatons closed in, Rainbow Dash delivered a preemptive kick to closest one, separating the upper half of its skull from the body. It stumbled momentarily before dissolving into dust, but two more of its ilk clambered over its remains.

Twilight lowered her head, braced her hooves, and began firing bolts of magic from her horn, each creating a backlash that throbbed through her body in time with her pulse. Fifteen heartbeats later, their lines drew too close for comfort, so she started taking a step backwards between each shot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a golem leap towards Rarity, only to find himself gored upon her horn. The sound of scattering dust and violent coughing followed, but was immediately drowned out by the creaks and hisses that crawled through Twilight's ears, scuttling around the rhythmic throbbing like hyenas nipping at an elephant.

The ponies soon found themselves in the center of the vault, with their backs to the tree. "There's too many of them," squealed Fluttershy from its branches. "We have to get out!"

Twilight struggled to find room for thoughts amidst her overloaded senses. Teleporting the six of them out would require a clearer idea of their destination than she had—being encased in rock would hardly be better than being torn apart by golems. She could teleport them into the tree, but she doubted its branches could hold all of them for long.

As she struggled to thin their ranks and to think of another option, her magic sense was tickled by something she hadn't noticed before: a presence inside the tree, shivering and shuffling almost as though it were conscious…

She stopped shooting and gasped. "A spellcaster!" Pinkie Pie turned to look at her with wide eyes that silently begged to know whether she'd get to live or not. "The tree!" Twilight shouted. She couldn't hear herself, but she prayed they could hear her. "Someone's inside the tree!"

She whipped around, her horn brimming with as much unicorn fire as she could muster. Fluttershy flew into the air, while the other four backed as far away from the tree as they dared, just in time for her to send a scorching blast through its trunk. A barrage of branches, large splinters, and smoking embers landed on a row of golems opposite Twilight. As the smoke cleared, she squinted through it and learned the identity of her spellcaster.

"The wing!" shouted Rainbow Dash. Realizing her magic was exhausted, Twilight lunged towards the large black wing, which was still reeling from the attack, and sunk her teeth deep into its base, which extended down into the stump of the tree. Her eyes widened and she gagged as the unmistakable taste of blood slithered into her mouth, but she dug her teeth deeper, jerking her head from side to side as her heartbeat grew louder and faster.

Though she was dangerously light-headed, she persevered, bracing her hoofs and putting her every muscle into the effort. The thumping was joined by a distant screaming, as if the wing's owner were miles away. She felt her eyes rolling up into her head. The scream grew steadily louder until it became the only thing she could hear, the only sensation left in a brain that was on the verge of abandoning her...

_Snap. _For a brief moment, she was aware of nothing but some vaguely sideways motion as the wing's resistance vanished. Then there was a dull, distant _smack_ as the ground slammed into the side of her head from out of nowhere. She briefly wondered why nothing hurt before she realized she couldn't feel anything to begin with.

She tried to roll over to see if the golems were still approaching, but all she could see were swaying, colorful blurs that were probably either her friends or a flock of tropical birds. She sent signals to her ears telling them to move, but got neither sensation nor sound as a response. She took a shaky breath and managed words _Get the wing._ Hoping that her friends had heard her and could handle the situation from there, she permitted herself to pass out.

…

Consciousness returned to her sometime later, clambering sluggishly and grudgingly into her skull. Most of her body still refused to move, so she compensated by blinking furiously. She suspected was the only way she'd be able to stay awake.

As she experimentally moved her jaw, she was alarmed by the strong taste of blood. She spat a gob onto herself and moved her tongue around, searching for a spot where she'd bitten it. She stopped as her eyes came into focus on a red, raw and glistening stump at the end of something lying on the ground several feet away. Squinting at, she ascertained two things: what had happened to the wing, and how the blood in her mouth had gotten there.

"Twilight!"

She managed to turn her head slightly to see Applejack rushing towards her. "It was alive," croaked Twilight. Applejack raised an eyebrow, so Twilight tried to think of a better description. When none occurred to her, she resumed blinking furiously.

As her other friends arrived at her side, Twilight was hit by a shuddering, burning sensation all over her body. As she groaned and contorted, she recognized it as the same pain she'd missed earlier.

"Hold still," urged Fluttershy gingerly. "You have a very nasty bruise on the side of your head."

The moment she'd finished hearing the words _bruise_ and _head,_ the pain in Twilight's left temple doubled. "Where are we?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"Fluttershy and I pulled everyone out through that hole in the ceiling," said Rainbow Dash. "We had plenty of time once all the golems turned back into dust."

"So it worked," said Twilight, nodding in her mind since she didn't want to move her head.

"About that," said Pinkie Pie slowly, circling Twilight's supine form. "How did you _know_ ripping out the wing would kill all the zombies?"

"It was casting spells." She let out a hacking cough and discovered she'd swallowed some of the wing's blood while she'd been unconscious. "I didn't realize it before, because it could cast them from so far away and its magic wasn't like a pony's… but once I was right next to the tree, I could feel it in there. It was _alive."_

Applejack glanced suspiciously at the wing. "Still might be. That wing was hidin' in that tree for Celestia knows how long, and it still bleeds red. It plainly ain't anythin' natural, but that don't tell us what it _is._"

For the first time, Twilight examined her surroundings. They were in a wide, mossy ravine that sloped gently up towards what looked to be a path up the mountainside, and sloped down to a familiar hole in the ground. She was close enough to see snapped branches lying on the cave floor below, gazing up at her as if to accuse.

Meanwhile, the wing's feathers rustled softly in the wind, dust trickling out of them and back onto the mountain. "This wing belonged to Thunder Dasher, the pony we're trying to stop," said Twilight.

Rarity grimaced. "It's no wonder it was so well-protected. We've taken something far more personal than any magical artifact."


	9. Chapter 9: The Apple

Chapter 9: The Apple

_Her hooves slid silently through the sand, which felt like a welcome reprieve from dust. Any kind of sediment was preferable to dust, of course. She couldn't tell if she was making any forward progress, but it didn't matter. As long as she could keep walking, there was nothing to worry about._

_ The horizon rippled in that particular way which defines the word _sweltering_, but Twilight felt no heat. She looked around and saw nothing but perfectly flat sand in every direction. Given what she could see, the whole world might be nothing but sand. Would that be so terrible?_

_ A black shape appeared on the horizon, drifting lazily towards her. At first, she thought it might be a vulture, but she ruled this out after realizing it was too large._

_ She tensed as she recognized the black alicorn, who began to circle her. _I know who you are,_ she shouted. _You're the dangerous pony we're trying to stop. Well, we took your wing, so you won't fly again anytime soon.

_She was disconcerted to notice that her enemy still had both his wings. He tucked them away as he landed, glancing sideways at Twilight for a moment before turning to walk away._

_ She followed him. _You think you're going to trick us somehow, don't you? You're sneaking around somewhere, looking just like any other pony, and you think you'll just snatch the wing out from under us and start wreaking havoc, or whatever it is you've got planned.

_He kept looking straight ahead. Twilight got the feeling he was ignoring her to make a point. She was caught by surprise when her hoof struck something hard, and looked down to see cracked bricks forming a faint, wandering path. Squinting through the refraction, she spotted a palace in the distance. Though neither she nor the alicorn sped up, they seemed to approach the structure with unnatural speed, as though her depth perception had been too pessimistic._

_She passed through the golden, pearl-studded_ _gates and into a vast chamber with gleaming marble walls, centered on a squat pedestal. On the floor were carved concentric circular patterns of galloping ponies, the centermost of which appeared to be chasing his tail._

_ Twilight cautiously approached the alicorn, who was now staring at her from the center of the room. She noticed a shiny red apple practically winking at her from the pedestal, giving a teasing wobble._

An apple? _She cocked her head. _Do you honestly think you can trick me with something so mundane? _He inclined his head in a way that was perfectly infuriating. _You think you're better than me, don't you? _she demanded through a mouthful of apple. She swallowed. _Well, I'm not going to be outsmarted by some smug necromancer, or geomancer, or whatever it is you are. _She looked down for the apple, but he seemed to have removed it._

I can only assume you're trying to downplay your intelligence. _She jumped slightly at hearing him speak for the first time. _I understand. Just look at where your knowledge has gotten you.

_Twilight narrowed her eyes. _Don't try to insult me,_ she said, kicking aside an apple core that had found its way to her hooves._

_ He shook his head without breaking eye contact. _I'm trying to help you. You're like a stubborn child who won't take her medicine.

_Her attempt at a retort stopped in her throat. She gagged and coughed, her tongue rolling out as she tried to dislodge whatever it was she was choking on. Her eyes watered as something thin and rigid slid out of her mouth and onto the floor: a single black feather which was now bent and coated in saliva._

_ He raised an eyebrow. _Do you understand? A tree doesn't think. It was a decision so easy, you didn't even notice yourself making it. Then again, hardly anyone would. _He turned to walk towards a long, central hallway lined with statues of ponies in fierce poses. They seemed to shrink from his presence, their edges becoming softer and blending in with the walls._

Stop speaking in riddles, _Twilight called as she chased after him. _You're obviously showing up in my dream to intimidate me, right? How do you expect to get under my skin if you can't even make sense? _She tried to match his stride, but he was tall enough that she almost had to gallop to keep up with him._

It's your dream, _he said slowly._ What can I say to you that you don't already know?

_They came to a flowering courtyard which looked distantly familiar. Streams flowed through stone channels from nowhere to nowhere, weaving along the way through beds of lazily swaying flowers. Twilight's heart beat faster and her breath felt like some cold foreign object in her lungs. Pinpricks of some complex, mixed emotion tingled across her skin, stirring the realization of an old fear which seemed to smile at her just as the alicorn now did._

This is where I saw the rabbit, _she said, sitting down. There were tears in her eyes. She was back here to realize some new terrible truth, to comprehend something so fundamentally wrong it would ruin the joy of living._

You're trying to break me down, _she said, glaring up at the alicorn. _You think if I'm distracted by… by unpleasant thoughts, then I won't be strong enough to stop you. Well, you're wrong. I made a promise to Celestia, and I intend to keep it.

_He nodded._ I don't doubt that, but you have no idea what you've agreed to. I think you should know what's at stake.

_As he stomped his forehoof, Twilight was hit by a wave of dizziness. She shook her head and tried to squint the garden back into focus, but it was all a mess of green, yellow, purple…_

Stomp. _Twilight's legs gave way beneath her, all four of them falling asleep at once. She struggled and flailed, desperately forcing her gaze towards the wriggling, purple blurs that she assumed were a part of her._

Stomp. _The leg-shapes fell limply to the grass-surface. Twilight listened to the alicorn speak over the tempo of her heartbeat, keeping time like a poet. _None of this is alien to the experience of someone alive. When you lose your vision or parts of your body become numb, you fall back on other senses. The fear of the dark, for instance, diminishes as you feel and listen, realizing that darkness does not obliterate the world that you perceive.

Stomp. _The vague colors all blurred into black, or maybe white. It could have been both or neither. Twilight tried to open and close her eyes, but the light or absence of light didn't shift in the slightest. She was seeing nothing, staring into a place that no one was supposed to see. The sound of her own erratic, fevered breaths filled her ears._

Do you understand now? I am trying to help you imagine a singularity. You can approach it from many directions, but at the very center there's a threshold that only the rarest of imaginations can cross. All your life, you've known it was there, but now you can inspect it closely, comprehend the terror that directs sentient life.

Stomp. _A tingling ran up her spine, leaving numbness behind it as it reached from her back up to her neck. The alicorn kept speaking, but his words faded into nonsensical vibrations, too deep to recognize as sound. _I can't hear, _she realized as the base of her neck became numb. Her face tingled; her thoughts rammed themselves against the front of her skull, pressing desperately outwards against the creeping nothing. She tried to scream but had no idea how, so she thought desperate wishes for life and pleas to keep existing, which developed into terse, shrill squeals against a seamless fabric of absolute absence._

…

She stared at a rock in front of her for a long time before she realized she could see it. As she realized that its edges were fuzzy and its colors were faded, she panicked, fearing that her senses were still diminished. Her eyes flicked from side to side, taking in blurry, shapeless images until she recognized the atmospheric condition known as "night".

She experimentally flexed her joints and was relieved to feel a dull, throbbing pain rather than complete numbness. Her hooves scraped weakly against the ground a few times before she managed to furrow one into the dust, pushing herself up.

She stumbled through the darkness with her head down and no destination in mind, hoping her body wouldn't remind her of any wounds that weren't superficial. She squinted at a sack on the ground to her left, suspecting it held food until it turned out to contain Pinkie Pie.

Exploring further, she discovered the supine forms of Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy, all sheltered beneath a large rock outcropping. It seemed they were in a small cave, most likely still somewhere near the mountains, but it wasn't a place Twilight recognized. As her hoof brushed against the cot she'd been sleeping on, she noticed sticks which had been fastened to its corners.

_They carried me,_ she thought. _How long have I been asleep?_ She vaguely remembered her friends shuffling around her and the word _painkiller_ coming up—had she been in pain? Where did they get a painkiller, out here in the wilderness? Did they give her some plant, or had one of them brought medicine? Leaning against the wall near the cave's entrance was the wing. She stared at it for a long time, half-expecting it to move of its own accord.

She winced as she stepped outside and the moonlight struck her eyes. As her vision adjusted, she surveyed the area, breathing a sigh of relief as she observed that she was no longer in the dead, desiccated realm of the wing, but someplace where tall grass hid what sounded like hundreds of chirping crickets. As she scanned the rolling hilltops for some sort of landmark, she froze.

At the top of a tall hill, framed against the full moon, was the silhouette of a pony sitting perfectly still. Twilight slunk through the grass, wishing she had some way to move through it without the blades rustling against her coat. She slowly circled around, positioning herself at the base of the hill. Her heart pounded as she wondered whether this was Thunder Dasher, come to take what was his. Should she wake the others? Would it make any difference?

Her thoughts were silenced as the pony snapped to attention, crouching low and looking in her direction. Her hooves trembled as images of eyeless, gaping faces flashed through her mind, along with that awful, dry, deafening hissing sound, like a den of snakes…

"Twilight?"

She stood upright, her ears perking up. "Rainbow Dash?" As she climbed up the hill, ignoring her legs' protests, the nebulous, dark pony-shape became her svelte, winged friend, cocking her head as Twilight crested the hilltop.

"You're awake! How do you feel?"

Twilight arched her back. "I'm a little sore, but I think I'll manage. What are you doing up here?"

Rainbow Dash looked up at the moon. "I woke up in a panic and couldn't fall back asleep. I feel like someone dangerous is nearby—Thunder Dasher, I guess—and he's going to steal the wing if no one's guarding it."

"I felt the same way. I even had a dream about it." Twilight paused; what she'd just said was news to her. "I dreamt he took me to a palace, and made me eat an apple, and then…" She stopped, remembering the garden. The sense of panic crept back into her, causing her to shiver

"And then what happened?" asked Rainbow Dash.

"Then… he killed me, I think. It felt so real, like I was dying a little bit at a time. First he made me blind, then I couldn't move, and then…" She realized that her voice was starting to break up. She swallowed, and her voice fell to a whisper: "It's not just the wing. I'm still afraid to die. Now I'm thinking about it again, and I just feel sick. It didn't happen then, but someday it _will_, and I'm helpless to stop it. I'm terrified."

Rainbow Dash's wide, intense eyes suddenly pierced Twilight's, as if to deliver or receive some immense truth. "Maybe it's something else you're afraid of. Maybe this is some general gloom you're feeling after what happened in that cave, and you're just expressing it with these thoughts."

Twilight gave a suppressed sigh of the sort that creates a soft _cluck_ in the back of the throat. "That's something I've always told myself whenever I've felt this way, but I don't believe it anymore. I think, 'This is just a mood I've settled into. These thoughts are just a symptom of how I feel right now.' But it's the other way around. I feel this way because I know I'm going to die. I wish I'd felt the dread you all did when you heard that ringing sound, because then I could pretend this feeling was just some kind of delirium or nightmare, not a natural consequence of self-awareness."

"So you're saying you want to repress your feelings because you didn't know how to deal with them. You want to live in a fantasy where life just goes on."

"I'm saying who _doesn't_ want to live in a fantasy? The stories we imagine make that clear enough. When was the last time you read a book where the main character dies at the end? It's always 'and they all lived happily ever after.' How disgusting, how unacceptable would it be to read something accurate?"'

Rainbow's face fell. She looked disappointed, as if she'd been expecting good news. "I don't know what to say. I mean, I've felt that way before, but I guess most of the time, I just get by living in the moment."

"You're lucky."

The two of them spent several minutes looking at the stars. Hours later, Twilight was rudely awoken by the sunrise, which was letting her know that she'd fallen asleep atop the hill.


	10. Chapter 10: The Fall

Chapter 10: The Fall

Celestia lagged behind her mother and sister as the three of them crossed a dried riverbed whose stones were still slippery with a ghost of a river. Luna looked back at Celestia with a calm expression, almost as though she'd forgotten the day before.

"We're almost there," said their mother. "Luna, Celestia, I think it's best if the three of us work together on this spell. How does that sound?"

Luna kept looking at her sister, saying nothing. "I'm not sure I can," said Celestia.

"You two can start, and I'll help you. That's the best way for you to learn."

They came to a large circle of stones arranged around a flat patch of dust at the forest's edge. The shadow of the tree-line fell jaggedly near the circle's perimeter, courteously allowing the sunshine to reach the ground where the three ponies drew together.

In the center of the circle lay a neat stack of fresh, green reeds, all cut the same length. Mother inclined her head, the air around her horn shimmering as two of the topmost reeds steadily rose.

"Each of you take a reed, and I'll show you how to make the first knot."

As Celestia magically grasped one of the reeds and her mother loosened her hold on it, it slipped into a distinct, unsteady wobble. It gave her some satisfaction to see the same thing happen to Luna's reed.

"Now, you start by weaving them together like this…" A light tug led one end of Celestia's reed towards Luna's, twisting around it, slipping under it, wrapping back, widening into a loop…

"Slow down. It's bent right here, you see?" Celestia realized that she'd been moving the reed on her own. She watched as her mother slowly undid a knot, straightening a bent segment before retying it. "Now, this next knot is very similar, only it goes in the other direction…"

As Celestia did her part in creating the floating construct, she was distracted by rough tugs on the ends of her reeds. She glanced, confused, at her mother before realizing that the interference was probably coming from Luna, whose brow was furrowed in intense concentration.

Mother seemed to notice the lack of synchronization. "No need to rush, Luna. We have plenty of time." As a pony's head took shape, Celestia was struck by the realization of how large their creation would be when it was finished: larger than she was, and nearly the size of her mother. She shivered.

Several times, Celestia or Luna would make a mistake, only to see it corrected by Mother. As the reed pony took shape, its unfinished legs dangled unsettlingly, like shredded strands of flesh. Celestia was thankful that it had no eyes.

"Keep in mind, you can only make the same pony once. It's very important that you understand that."

"Yes, Mother," said Luna without averting her gaze from the particularly difficult back joint she was building."

"There's no way around it. Even if you finished this one, took it apart, and put it back together exactly the same, it wouldn't be the same pony."

Celestia glanced up at her. "How can that be?"

"It's hard to explain. You'll understand someday."

"Why does it matter if it's the same pony?" asked Luna.

Mother was silent for a long time. Then, a voice that was much softer than the words called for, she said: "I suppose it doesn't."

After that, she was silent for a long time, glancing periodically at the sun as it crawled across the sky. Celestia felt the back of her neck tingle as the reed pony reached completion, resolving into a shape that was like her, but made of a material that was unlike her, and filled with intentional gaps and fibrous, green knots. Why was the sight so unnerving?

Mother smiled. "You've both done very well, but we still have to do the hardest part. I want you to close your eyes and concentrate. This will feel very strange, but bear with me."

Not wanting to let their creation out of her sight, Celestia tried to keep one eye slightly open, but noticed Luna glaring at her and shut it. Thrilling, swarming motes of magic coursed through her head, so alien and complex that it took her a moment to realize that the magic was Mother's. Convoluted, fractal afterimages danced across the backs of her eyelids; her breathing and heartbeat suddenly had a pitch.

"It's not enough just to make the pony move. It has to _decide_ to move, and before it can do that, it needs to be able to see and feel."

A twinge of alarm shot through Celestia as a falling, dizzy sensation claimed her, but she trusted Mother, so she kept her eyes tightly shut. The ground dropped away beneath her as her magic snuck out of her horn of its own accord. She was momentarily placeless and thoughtless before her skin made a rude return, itchy and nearly numb, around some new, nebulous _self_ that felt nothing like herself.

"Feeling is bound to feel strange to something that has never felt before." Mother's voice started off warbling and distant, but grew louder and steadier as she spoke. "Do you hear me, Celestia? Do you see me, Luna?"

Celestia briefly wondered why her sister was allowed to open her eyes, but was distracted by a sudden burst of electrical, shuddering _waking_ that rippled across her entire body, like a numb leg returning from its sleep. Light, color, sound, and air shot through her entire being, immolating her every nerve with a pain that did not hurt, a terror that was not frightening. She saw and heard the world new, felt particles of air slamming against her reeds like stones, heard the song of the earth and the sky as a vibration that threatened to shake her to pieces.

"Is this what it feels like to be born?" The voice was a tidal wave of shrill echoes, but Celestia guessed that it belonged to Luna. Her muscles shook and spasmed as dense, liquid proprioception oozed through them, forcing her to contort, arching her back as stars sang and danced in front her eyes.

The feeling was too much, to _be_ was too intense, and just as she thought she might lose her mind, a gentle_ tug _from somewhere unseen jolted everything out of focus. As more tugs followed, panoplies of colors that would have taken centuries to count blurred into pure white, and sound so full she heard it mostly with her bones faded into a soft buzz.

She awoke, as from a nap, lying in dust that only felt like dust. As she struggled to her hooves, furiously shaking her head, she heard Luna groan.

"Remember the experience you've just had. You'll need it the next time you cast a spell like this."

As her eyes adjusted to the light of her own reality, Celestia saw the reed pony standing on solid ground, lifting and shaking each of its hooves, one at a time. It froze and stared at her, then at Luna, and then at Mother. Its ears twitched as it made a shuffling sidestep that signaled intense, purposeful caution. _It can see us,_ thought Celestia, the notion slamming against the walls of her mind in a failed effort to make her understand its significance.

Just as Luna began to back away, the pony whipped around and began galloping away, parallel to the edge of the forest. A few times, its wings would unfold, only for it to tuck them away again, as if it had changed its mind about flying—which it probably had, since it now had a mind to change.

"Mother," said Celestia, "you did most of that spell for us, didn't you?" She nodded. "So then, how long will it be before we can do that on our own?"

Again, Mother's gaze went to the sun. "Many years, I think. You should practice the spell every day."

"Yes, Mother." Celestia watched the reed pony in the distance, galloping across the hillsides. Her legs tensed as she imagined running for the first time.

"And remember what I told you: you can't make the same pony twice."

…

They spent most of the remaining daylight walking through the forest, and by the time they emerged, Celestia discovered that the sun had set behind her back. She gave a meaningful look to Luna, who cocked her head. Celestia kept her eyes fixed on her sister's and slowed her pace until both of them were a good distance behind Mother.

"Where do you think those ponies go after we make them?"

Luna shrugged. "I don't know. They run off. Why are we whispering?"

Celestia glanced at Mother. "I think she's trying to distract us. Remember yesterday? She seemed so afraid, like that black pony was going to do something terrible to us."

"She said he would leave us alone."

Mother looked over her shoulder at them, causing each to take a step away from the other. She gave them a smile, which they weakly returned. As they drew close to the castle, Mother lit her horn and let her daughters pass through the door before her, lingering for a moment before following them inside.

…

Before long, Celestia found herself intoxicated by the taste and aroma of thick barley soup. The three of them stood around a table, each of their wooden bowls filled from a large central pot. As Luna ate, a thin trickle of soup wandered through the air and into her bowl along a winding, spiraling path.

Celestia snorted. "Just use a spoon." Luna looked up with a start as the soup trail fell onto the table with a soft _splash_. She bit her lip and began magically siphoning the soup into a floating, rippling ball before she looked around and realized she had nowhere to put it.

"The table's clean," said Mother with a chuckle. "You can still eat that."

Luna's nose twitched and she raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure I want to." After some consideration, she strode over to the window, flung it open, and cast the soup ball out into the night before closing the window and returning to the table with evident satisfaction.

Soon everyone had finished eating. Celestia shuffled towards the hallway, throwing Luna a subtle tilt of the head. Luna rose to follow her, but was stopped in her tracks by Mother's embrace.

"You know I love you very much, don't you?"

Luna smiled and twisted her head around in a failed attempt at eye contact. "Of course, Mother. I love you too."

"The same goes for you, Celestia. Come here."

As Celestia squeezed her way alongside Luna, she was alarmed to notice that Mother wasn't smiling. Her gaze passed vacantly through the floor, into somewhere dark and unnamed.

"You two don't know it yet, but there's nothing you can't do. The world is a beautiful place, and it belongs to you. Don't ever forget that." She drew a long, unsteady breath. "Now, go to bed. Tomorrow will be a big day, just like today was."

She held her daughters close for a long time before releasing them, turning to walk away a second too late to prevent Celestia from spotting tears in her eyes.

The sisters walked to their room in a somber daze, neither looking at each other nor avoiding each other's gaze. Celestia came to a stop on the floor next to her bed, staring at nothing as Mother had done.

"He's coming tonight," said Luna in a shaky whisper. "Something bad is going to happen, and she wants us to be asleep so that we don't see it."

Celestia nodded. "I'm not going to sleep, though. I'm going to _pretend_ I'm asleep, and when that black pony shows up, I'm going to spy on him."

Luna's expression became resolute. "I'll follow you. I want to know what's going on, no matter how bad it is."

They lay there in the darkness, almost breathless. As the moon rose and peeked through the window, Celestia gave it a challenging stare, a silent ultimatum demanding that it surrender, as she would not. Sleep tried to slither in unnoticed; her legs grew heavy and her eyes began to drift shut, but she shook her head and clung to consciousness with new determination.

"Luna, are you awake?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"I am."

"Good."

As empty, silent time drifted passively by, it occurred to Celestia just now long a night really was. She braced herself for a long and difficult fight against that insidious trickster, sleep, and tried to measure out the time in her head.

_It must have been an hour by now, right? (Or at least half an hour.)_

_By now, it must have been at least two hours. Then again, would the second hour feel longer than the first one?_

At one point, she was sure she would fall asleep if she lay there another second, so she leapt out of bed, forcing herself to breathe quickly as she stumbled around in circles, shaking her head for a few seconds before rolling back onto the bed.

_There. Five hours. I think the moon moved, so maybe I can tell time by looking where the moonlight lands._

Every couple of minutes, she would thump her head against the headboard or slap herself in the face a few times. She settled into a rhythm and focused herself completely on pushing through the dizzying, numbing, stupefying poison called sleep.

_Ten hours. This is easy. Just a little longer until morning._

She gritted her teeth, squirming and fidgeting every time she got too comfortable. She put a colossal effort into her eyelid muscles, forcing them to open as hard as possible, only to find them disobeying her by blinking and shutting again.

_Fifteen hours. I don't think I've been counting right._

It occurred to her that she had heard nothing from Luna in almost fifteen hours, give or take.

"Luna?"

No response. Her face burned hot at the realization of her sister's betrayal in leaving her alone, ready to drift off to sleep with the hopes of a wake-up that would never come. How selfish and inconsiderate it was to shirk the one responsibility she'd had: staying awake. Celestia began to rise, planning to wake Luna by any means necessary, when—

_Thump._

The hoof-step from the hallway left her frozen, staring at the door. As more steps followed, she flung herself towards her pillow and curled up with her eyes closed, heart now beating too hard to let her fall asleep. She winced as she realized the hoof-steps were getting closer. With the utmost of caution, she steadily rotated her head and opened one eye as little as possible, hoping dearly that she looked like she was asleep.

The sound stopped and the door began to open, agonizingly slowly. As soon as she could see the pony's face in the faint moonlight, she breathed a deep sigh of relief—it was Mother.

Celestia closed her eye completely. A long silence followed, filled with the creeping tension brought by Mother's visit. Eventually, Mother closed the door, leaving Celestia to listen as her hoof-steps grew quieter before fading completely.

_I still need to wake Luna. I should get up, go over there, and push her out of bed._

Celestia lay still.

_I need to roll over, put my hooves on the floor, pull myself out of bed, walk over to Luna's bed, climb onto it, climb around to the other side of her, and push her until she falls out of bed and wakes up._

Celestia lay still.

_I need to push my left front hoof against the bed until I'm in a position that lets me roll over, push my right front hoof against the bed until I'm facing the other way, use my back hooves to push myself towards the edge of the bed until my front hooves can reach the side of the bed, push the side of the bed with one of my left front hoof until I can reach the floor with my right front hoof, pull myself forward with my front hooves until my back hooves can reach the floor, lift my left front hoof, move it forward, lift my right back hoof, push myself forward with my right front hoof, do the same thing on the other side, keep taking steps like that until I reach Luna's bed, put my right hoof on top of her bed, push myself up onto to her bed, use my left back hoof to push myself to the right of Luna, move past her, push myself back to the left with my right back hoof, turn around, put my front hooves against Luna, and push with my back hooves until she falls out of bed and wakes up._

Celestia lay still.

_I need to make my left front hoof start moving up against the sheets, move it to the left, move it down, put it against the bed, push hard enough to make the rest of me move backwards, pull my left front hoof back towards me, move my right front hoof out from under my side, move it forward, put it against…_

She woke up to a distant ringing sound. She stared at the ceiling for several seconds before realizing that in order to wake up, she must have fallen asleep. Panicking, she jerked around until she could see the window, and confirmed that it was still dark outside.

"Luna." The name came out slurred, her tongue stumbling from the 'U' to the 'N' as though it were walking on ice. Luna gave no response.

"Luna." Again, no response.

She managed to twist and drag her way out of bed, her body reflexively taking a moment to stretch the instant she was standing up. As soon as she could move again, she rushed over and began nudging Luna with her hoof, repeating her name intermittently.

"Huh?" managed Luna. "I'm awake."

Celestia glared at her. "No, you're not. Now, listen. Do you hear that?"

Luna blinked blearily, nudging her face with her hoof. "I think so…" Suddenly, her eyes shot wide open and she looked at Celestia for the first time since she'd started speaking. "It's that sound. That same sound I heard before, from that black thing in the ground."

The ringing traveled through Celestia's ears into her bones, instilling in them an unsettling vibrating sensation and seizing her stomach in an icy vice grip. "Where is it coming from?"

Luna struggled into a sitting position, leaned towards Celestia, and whispered "From him."

Celestia shook her head. "Well, where is he? We need to go spy on him." Even as she spoke, she began to regret the decision. Nevertheless, she moved to the window, squinting at the shadows on the landscape.

"Let's try to find Mother," suggested Luna. As Celestia turned towards her, an intense yet brief flash of light filled the room. She whipped around to face the window, but everything outside looked exactly the same as before. She dashed out the door and down the hallway, with Luna trailing closely behind.

She lit her horn as she ran, dimming it momentarily when she reached Mother's room. She glanced at Luna, who simply nodded, and then opened the door. A lump formed in her throat as her horn-light fell on an empty bed.

With that, the two of them set off for the front gate. As they left the castle, Celestia felt a chill breeze rush up to meet her, and heard the ringing grow louder.

"It's coming from the woods," said Luna. They charged up the hillside, Celestia's head pounding as the insidious vibrations birthed noxious emotions in her mind, swirling, unformed ideas involving fears she couldn't name but felt as acutely as needles.

She ran through the trees, no longer following Luna, since she could now hear where the sound was coming from. She wanted nothing more than to run away, to hide back under her warm sheets and never have to learn why she was afraid—yet, she _had_ to know.

As they approached the epicenter of the ringing, Luna's labored breathing devolved into strained whimpers, and the two ponies slowed down. Celestia darted her eyes about, feeling strangely vulnerable, as though the darkness might gobble her up, never letting her see the sun again.

Celestia crouched as she heard wing-beats up ahead. She crawled forward, ferns brushing against her belly as she emerged from the shade of the trees and into a moonlit clearing. She breached the last layer of undergrowth just in time to see a winged, horned silhouette rising up past the canopy, where it continued its ascent until its shape was framed against the full moon.

_The ringing is getting quieter, _she realized. Each step forward seemed to lift her higher, until she was barely aware of the soil beneath her hooves as she melted into the moonlight's surreal embrace. She approached the prone form in the center of the clearing with a half-numb, drifting stride. Without a sound, Luna was alongside her, the two of them kneeling by Mother, whose every breath sounded like a raspy struggle against some unseen oppressor.

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw Celestia leaning over her. Her eyes seemed to glaze over; her jaw hung limply for a several seconds. She managed a heavy, dry-sounding swallow before speaking in a cold, cruel voice that sounded like it must have belonged to someone else:

"Tell him he meant nothing to me."

Her eyes closed. Her head fell to the side, slumping against the ground. Luna leaned down and began nudging Mother's face with her nose, whispering soft, half-formed pleas that she couldn't quite assemble into complete words.

Celestia's muddled thoughts went to the reed pony and the overwhelming strangeness of creating it. _This is another moment like that one._ Here was something fundamentally new to her universe, unnamed and unknown until it had collided, without mercy, into her consciousness. She wondered what the throbbing nausea inside her was called, where her tears had come from, and what exactly she was supposed to be looking at.

She joined Luna, nudging Mother, imploring her to wake up and take them back home. Her weight shifted only as far as they pushed her, producing an odd, persistent yet passive resistance that Celestia had never felt from a pony. It was like trying to flip over a large, mossy boulder—none of her efforts got the slightest response. Her struggles grew feebler entire her entire body relaxed, nuzzled against a wall of fading warmth as sleep remembered her.

…

The next thing she knew, she was hearing wing-beats again. Her eyes shot open in the muffled sunlight filtering through the fog, and she frantically surveyed her surroundings through half-awake eyes. As her thoughts and vision began to adjust, she looked up and immediately began scrambling backwards.

The black pony was drifting downwards in slow circles, like some great, terrifying bird of prey. Celestia bumped into a tree, turned around and hopped around its base in two short bounds. A glance over her shoulder gave her the stark sight of the black pony leaning over Luna, who was shuffling her wings in her sleep.

"Leave her alone!" Celestia stepped back out into the clearing, holding her head high. Even in her gut-wrenching terror, she noticed that the ringing he'd brought with him was much quieter than before.

His mouth curled into an indecisive half-frown as he studied her, as though she'd presented a problem he wasn't quite sure how to solve. Luna stirred and murmured an inaudible question, creaking her eyes open and staring at the black pony for a few seconds. As soon as she'd processed the situation, she jerked around until she was on her hooves and leapt to Mother's other side, where she crouched and hid.

"I'm not going to hurt either of you," he said, looking at Celestia now that Luna was out of eyeshot. "I came back because I didn't think it was right to leave _her_ here."

Celestia shivered. His voice was much deeper than she'd expected, and drastically different in timbre from any she'd heard from a pony.

"What do you mean?" demanded Luna, lifting her head up. "You're not taking her away, are you?"

"I am. It's the kindest thing I can do at this point."

Luna stamped her hoof. "No, it's _not!_ If you wanted to be kind, you'd wake her up!"

"She isn't asleep, Luna. Besides, she told me she didn't want her body left here. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come back."

Luna's jaw worked silently for a few seconds after hearing him speak her name. Finally, she said "I don't believe you! Stop lying and bring our Mother back!"

He let out an exasperated sigh, as though he were being pestered for snacks. "What you don't seem to understand is that she's dead. Bringing her back is beyond my power."

Upon hearing the word _dead_, Celestia felt an electric jolt travel directly from her ears to the pit of her stomach. This strange new facet of reality, this impassable threshold at the edge of her universe now had a name, a distinct form she could sound out with her mouth, to go with the shape she could see on the ground, or the bitter twinge she could feel somewhere in her chest.

"What does it mean?" she asked. "What is it like to be dead?"

He locked eyes with her. She gritted her teeth and forced herself not to flinch or look away. "It's like nothing," he said. "She can't see, hear, feel, or move. She can't think or dream. Nothing we say or do now will reach her, and the time that's passing right now is nothing to her. A day or a hundred thousand years could pass, and she would still experience nothing. This is the way she is now, and it will be forever. Even with her body lying there, it would be fairly accurate to say she doesn't exist anymore."

Every muscle and every bone in Celestia's body felt weak and shaky. Tiny stars danced in front of her eyes; a wave of sheer numbness briefly passed through her body, leaving behind a disorienting tingle. A powerful sickness gripped her, forcing her into a place as alien as the creation of the reed pony had been. The world started to spin and the ringing grew louder.

"Do you understand now?" he asked.

Celestia shook her head. "It doesn't make sense. How is something like that even possible? And why would you do something so horrible?"

He looked away. "I had no choice. Don't you know what I am yet?" He spoke his name, and in an instant, the spell he'd set in motion was complete. The ringing grew louder than ever, injecting Celestia and Luna with pure, liquid cruelty until they both lay crumpled on the grass, whimpering, legs quivering.

Their oppressor's voice boomed over the awful sound echoing from his soul. "She died so that I wouldn't have to! I would expect two frightened children to understand that better than anyone." His voice sounded strangely shaky, thought it might have been distorted by the rippling waves of hatred emanating from him as he circled the two sisters. "I think in time, you'll both make the same decision I did."

Luna stamped her hoof. _"No! _We would never become monsters like you!"

Celestia feared an attack, but she couldn't bear to open her eyes in her current state. "Are you so sure?" asked a voice that sounded inches away. "I'm willing to offer you a deal right now. You see, there's something I believe you two can help me with. In return, neither of you will ever have to die, like she did."

Celestia wasn't sure she could stay conscious much longer. Her world was being reduced to a blinding migraine, the blood pounding in her ears, and a throbbing white light filling her vision…

"Are you both so short-sighted, so eager to die that you would turn down my offer? Would it really be worth it, just to spite me, just to feel satisfied for a while before you stop feeling anything?"

Celestia gritted her teeth, waiting for Luna to offer a retort. When none came, she forced herself to stand, determined not to let her sister betray her again. _"We won't do it!" _she yelled as loudly as she could.

"I should have known you were too young to make the prudent decision. Very well—I'll give you a hundred years, no more and no less. If you ever decide to hear out my offer, simply call my name, and I'll find my way to you. If not… you know what's coming."

In an instant, the ringing stopped. Celestia panted as the green poured back into the grass, and the shape of Luna, supine, wide-eyed and shivering, resolved into focus next to her. She rushed over.

"Luna! What did he do to you?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I was so sure he was going to make both of us dead."

Celestia glanced around the clearing, but Death seemed to have left. She realized that he must have taken Mother with him, because the only thing left of her was a flattened patch of grass.

"We have a hundred years," said Celestia hollowly. Even now, everything that had happened still felt like an impossible nightmare, a twisted, feverish imagining, conceived out of some sudden miasma of her mind.

"We won't let him keep her," said Luna, staring at the ground through a thick layer of tears. "In a hundred years, we'll be bigger, and we'll know more magic. We'll be too strong for him to take us away—and maybe we'll even strong enough to bring Mother back."

Once again, Celestia remembered the experience of building the reed pony, of creating life inside a hollow shell. Her coat bristled as she visualized eyes seeing for the first time, a newly-made consciousness shining out into the world like a beam of light. An idea rapidly coalesced in her mind, built from all the lingering hopes and fears strewn about her mind.

"I think that's exactly what she was counting on."


	11. Chapter 11: The Marsh

Chapter 11: The Marsh

The sound of the ponies' hooves plodding across the grass melded into the ambient near-silence of the prairie as Twilight's ears acclimated. On this relaxing bed of not-noise, her thoughts floated across the landscape, bouncing absently towards the horizon. The wing had been far too large to fit in any of their saddlebags, so Applejack had tied it to Fluttershy's back. Twilight's ears twitched as they singled out the sound of those rough, ancient feathers brushing against the tall grass.

She turned her head as Rainbow Dash walked up alongside her and asked "So what's our plan for getting the other wing?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we barely got the first one without trading our lives for it. I mean those awful golems and that…" she swallowed. "…that _noise_ came pretty close to ruining our day back there." She raised an eyebrow. "You know I'm not one to back down from a challenge, but I'd like to get this next wing with more than a couple seconds to spare, y'know?"

Twilight nodded. "I completely agree with you. We should assume that the second wing will be guarded just as heavily as the first, if not more so. Most likely, it'll also be rooted to some source of nourishment, like a tree. That means our goal should be to sever it from as far away as possible."

She turned her head as Rarity approached from her other side. "And the ringing? There's a good chance we'll hear it again, isn't there? You have a plan for that, don't you?"

"Well, I…"

"If you don't, I'll still go, of course, but I'd _vastly_ prefer not to go through that ordeal again, and…"

She trailed off as Twilight began nodding. "The simplest way would be for you all to plug your ears with something when we get close."

"And what happens," asked Rarity, "if we plug our ears and we can still hear that awful sound?"

"In that case, I can cast a spell on each of you that will make you temporarily deaf, and then remove it when we leave. Still, I'd prefer to avoid that if possible."

In her mind's eye, Twilight traced out the path that lay ahead. Somewhere over the hills on the horizon lay a river, which fed from the uninhabited stretch of the Crystal Mountains where their next destination lay. She thought back to the eerie, empty landscape that had surrounded the first wing, and wondered if Celestia had meant to leave it in a place so fitting.

They came upon a broad stretch of marsh whose dense reeds blended in with the grass. Twilight began lifting her hooves gingerly as muddy water rose up around her steps. She moved her head from side to side, squinting through the reeds to discover more reeds.

She looked over her shoulder. "This water might be from the river we're looking for. As long as we stay near the edge, we shouldn't have to worry about sinking." The others filed into a line behind her as she slipped through the reeds, lowering her head to keep them from poking her eyes.

For a while, all she could hear was the rustling of the reeds against her size. Suddenly, the resistance disappeared and she stumbled uncertainly into cloudy, sulfuric-smelling water that rose nearly up to her chin. In a split-second, hoping to warn her friends against following her, she managed a strained _"ungh!" _before she was knocked forward by Pinkie Pie splashing into the water behind her.

"Ew! Twilight, this is _not_ a river! Rivers have sparkly, clear water, with fish swimming around. _This_ is where mosquitoes and leeches go to have babies."

"I know, I know." Twilight scrabbled around, flinching from each cold, slimy glob of mud that brushed against her legs. She'd never encountered a leech before. If one latched onto her, would she know?

She waded into some slippery shallows, scrabbling for the firmest patches of mud she could find. She twisted around checked her saddlebags. Though the bags' undersides were filthy and sopping wet, she was relieved to discover that none of their contents seemed to have suffered damage from the water.

She turned around to see Pinkie floundering towards her unsteadily. Behind her, Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash were hesitating at the water's edge. Fluttershy craned her head, attempting to see past them.

"Don't follow me," called Twilight. "Try to find another way around." She glanced down at Pinkie, who was making slow progress. Suddenly, the reeds behind her rustled, so she turned around and ducked in a single motion.

"What's up?" asked Pinkie. "Do you see something?"

"No, but I heard something." She re-entered the darkness of the reeds, braced for an attack that she would feel before she saw. Every few seconds she paused to listen for any sign of whatever she'd heard before.

Her breathing sounded abnormally loud and shallow in the enclosed space, and her face felt hot. _That noise could have come from a bird. That one's low, so it might be a snake, but it sounded like it was moving away. Wait, what was that?! Oh, it was me. And that…_

Her breath caught in her throat. Something very large and very nearby was taking slow, deliberate steps that _plunked_ in the mud like stones. Twilight lowered herself as she realized that there was no accompanying rustling from the reeds, which meant there was a clearing nearby. _Did the others find a way around? Why do I only hear one of them? Why isn't anyone talking?_

The hoof-steps ceased. Twilight tried to ease herself back into breathing, but the air came in sharp, shaky gasps that were far too loud for comfort. A minute or two passed. Twilight realized she would have a hard time leaving her position without making a sound, and that whoever was on the other side of the reeds had almost certainly noticed her.

"Rarity? Applejack?" Her voice cracked. There was a shifting, squelching sound, as though the mud were cracking its knuckles, and then a rapid, terrifying flurry of rustling as something began moving directly towards her through the reeds.

Twilight instinctively bolted. "If it's you," she shouted, "_please_ say so!" She felt foolish even as the words left her mouth, yet she couldn't help hoping against hope that this was some sort of prank. As she ran, she pieced together a mental image of the place where she'd entered the marsh, took what few seconds she dared to focus a burst of magical energy, and released it. In a flash of brilliant purple light, she leapt through the wonderfully familiar nowhere of her teleportation spell into somewhere.

Somewhere, as it turned out, wasn't the place she'd thought it would be. She stood on an island of dried, cracked mud, with crooked, irregular blades of grass poking out with a slumped, apathetic sort of aspect. All around her was the same murky water she'd just left, surrounded on all sides by what looked like the same reeds she'd just left.

Before she had time to adjust to the silence, a rustling sound issued from the reeds, quickly joined by a visible motion. Twilight waited, frozen by fear, until a large, dark shape burst forth, striking the water with a powerful splash which sent richly textured, billowing clouds of silt outwards from the point of impact.

The black alicorn lifted his head slowly, assuming his full height as he trudged out from the muck. He circled Twilight slowly, almost hypnotically, neither of them breaking eye contact or blinking. Everything behind him gradually melted into a green-brown-grey blur, against which his form stood out in sharp relief.

It was some time before Twilight realized that her mouth was hanging open. Each beat of her heart synchronized perfectly with his steps, as though he were walking through her chest cavity, sending out rhythmic shockwaves that trembled through her entire body, sublimating off her skin as some warm, living steam.

Her eyes fluttered and it became hard to follow his movement. The blood rushed to her head and her legs gave way, sending her into the ground's numb embrace, twitching and shuddering. Even as she lay there, she felt herself rapidly falling—possibly into someone else's nowhere.

_I can't let him beat me,_ she thought. _I need to hang on, can't lose sight of him, can't pass out, can't…"_

Then she heard the ringing.

It came gently at first, the same as the usual sound which the ear uses as a placeholder. As it grew louder, however, Twilight felt herself being assaulted by sharp, biting, undercurrents, like rapid electric shocks. Split-second images flashed through her eyelids: a white alicorn with dazzling, purple-amber hair; two small, distant silhouettes framed against the moon rising on the horizon, with a writhing tangle of rope hovering above them; Cloudsdale, struck by the subtle orange glow of almost-sunset, its towering skyline of white marble strangely unfamiliar, its streets bustling with pegasi who chattered and laughed for reasons she would never understand.

Somewhere, layered within the ringing, she heard an androgynous, childish voice. _They're all stupid. Don't they understand what's going to happen to them? If not, then they deserve to die._

She stumbled through someplace dark and subterranean. Her steps felt wet but firm, as though the entire floor were coated with an extremely thin layer of water.

_If they had to choose, they wouldn't die to save me. They would stand back and let it happen, and then make up excuses to feel better. Disgusting liars._

Glancing in the rough direction of the voice, she spotted a glimmer of light. As she ran towards it, making sharp _slaps _against the floor, the ringing grew quieter and the words grew louder. The light expanded, swelling out across a tiny island covered with grass and flowers.

_I should kill them. I have to die no matter what, but if they die before me, at least I'll be better off than someone._

Twilight felt her dizziness wash away as the ringing faded, leaving only the hateful mutterings of the white, curled-up shape in the island's center. Twilight approached it cautiously, absently wondering if she was about to be bitten.

As the creature lifted its head, sniffing the air, Twilight noticed first that its eyes were pure, glistening red, with no pupils or irises, and secondly that it was a pony, or shaped like a pony. There was no hair on its head, and it might not have had any hair at all—though it was hard to tell due to the distorting white glow that shone from its skin.

_I know you're there, _it said without looking at her. As its lips moved, she caught a glimpse of its tongue, which was black and abnormally thin. _Do you think I'm an idiot? That you could just sneak up on me and kill me, and then laugh at my dead body?_

Twilight shook her head vigorously, taking a step back. _I'm not here to kill you. I don't even know who you are._

The white pony let out an awful, rattling hiss that Twilight was sure ponies couldn't make. The light from its body flickered slightly, making the shadows at the edge of the island dance. _You liar. My name is Ego, and you've known me for a very long time. If you're not here to kill me, then why?_

_I think I'm lost. I was running through a swamp, and there was this black alicorn with blue eyes… do you know him?_

Ego narrowed its eyes and bared its teeth. It swiveled its head around, glaring in Twilight's general direction. Twilight suspected it might be blind. _You're talking about my father, Death. Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?_

_ Death? What do you mean, Death?_

_ I mean falling asleep and never waking up. I mean a long horn and a broad wingspan, like _I _deserve to have. I mean that horrible, awful nothingness that slowly eats away at you until you become nothing forever. I mean a black, silky coat that seems to shine when he walks under the sun. I mean the worst thing that could ever happen, and just thinking about it makes you feel like you're either going to cry or vomit._

Twilight shook her head. _I don't understand. I thought his name was Thunder Dasher._

_He was Death. Then, he was Thunder Dasher. Now, he's someone else. The name keeps changing, but he's still Death all the way down._

Ego rose and turned to walk away with an awkward, scuttling gait, bringing the light with her. _Wait! _Twilight shouted, running after it. _What is his name now? Where is he hiding?_

Without slowing, Ego turned her head and spat out a gob of something dark red which sizzled at it struck the ground. _You wouldn't save me. Why should I save you?_

Twilight ran as fast as she could, but Ego kept retreating into the distance, until finally there was nothing left to see but pitch darkness. Twilight's labored breathing grew louder, echoing inside her skull.

As she paced around tentatively, she felt the water begin to rise, lapping at her legs. She jerked her head from side to side, squinting, searching for any possible light source, lifting her hooves higher with each step until she could no longer get them above the water's surface. She stumbled forward, splashing her face with water, submerging herself, slipping away into absolute terror…

She opened her eyes to see her friends hovering over her, just as the ground materialized beneath her. She pushed herself up, made a half-hearted attempt to shake the mud off her back, and looked around. She was on the same island where she'd encountered Death.

"He was here!" she hissed. "The pony we're trying to stop. I saw him, just like in my dream. He's… he's Death."

Applejack titled her head. "Pardon? How do you figure that? Did he tell you?"

"Well, no… he was walking around me in circles, and then I fell and there was this dark place filled with water, and I met this pony called Ego who said Death was her father, and then I started drowning, and…" She slowed down as she listened to herself speak. "I guess I'm not sure what I saw," she said in a more even tone, "but before I passed out, I definitely saw Death, or whoever it was. I think he was here for the wing." She glanced at Fluttershy, who still had the black wing tied to her back. She bit her lip.

"Look," said Rainbow Dash, striding into the water and towards the reeds, "whoever or whatever it is we're up against, the best thing we can do is keep moving and carry out our mission. If we back down now, we'll only"—

She fell silent and turned her head as a rustling sound came from the reeds. The six of them all stared intently at the same spot, none of them moving until Rainbow Dash took a single step forward. No response came. She took a second step, then a third, and then there was a violent thrashing sound amidst the reeds.

Rainbow Dash leapt forward and out of sight, prompting Applejack and Pinkie Pie to rush in after her. Twilight, Fluttershy and Rarity hovered at the edge of the reeds, watching the confused flurry of motion play out for several seconds before a rainbow-colored mane burst out into view, followed by four bodies in a confused, rolling tangle.

As they tumbled out into the water, Twilight joined her friends in dragging a struggling, lime-green unicorn onto the island. One at a time, they each stepped back to watch as she lay there sputtering, trying to vocalize protestations in between bouts of spitting out swamp-water.

"So," said Twilight, narrowing her eyes, "we've finally found you."


End file.
